Mechanical control of individual superconducting vortices

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates a novel method to manipulate individual superconducting vortices using local mechanical stress, enabling precise control without magnetic fields or currents, and revealing strain-vortex interactions.

Contribution

The study introduces a mechanical approach to control vortices in superconductors, showing effective manipulation through local stress without external magnetic or electrical stimuli.

Findings

Vortices are attracted to and can be relocated by mechanical contact.

Stronger force and longer contact improve manipulation effectiveness.

Vortices remain stable at new locations after manipulation.

Abstract

Manipulating individual vortices in a deterministic way is challenging, ideally, manipulation should be effective, local, and tunable in strength and location. Here, we show that vortices interact with strain fields generated by mechanical stress. We utilized this interaction to move individual vortices in thin superconducting films via local mechanical contact, without magnetic field or current. We used a scanning superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID) to image vortices and to apply local vertical stress with the tip of our sensor. Vortices were attracted to the contact point, relocated, and were stable at their new location. We show that vortices move only after contact and that more effective manipulation is achieved with stronger force and longer contact time. Mechanical manipulation of vortices provides a local view of the interaction between strain and nanomagnetic objects as well as controllable, effective, and reproducible manipulation technique.