Intrinsic vortex pinning in superconducting quasicrystals

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that vortex pinning occurs intrinsically in superconducting quasicrystals due to their inhomogeneous order parameter, and proposes experimental detection methods based on this phenomenon.

Contribution

The study introduces a numerical approach to analyze vortex pinning in quasicrystals and reveals its intrinsic nature without impurities, using large-scale simulations of Penrose and Amman-Beenker tilings.

Findings

Vortex pinning occurs intrinsically in superconducting quasicrystals.

The inhomogeneous order parameter is due to lack of translational symmetry.

Proposed experimental detection of vortex pinning effects.

Abstract

We numerically show that a vortex pinning occurs in superconducting quasicrystal without impurities and defects. This vortex pinning is intrinsic since the superconducting order parameter in quasicrystal is always inhomogeneous due to the lack of the translational symmetry. We propose that experiments influenced by vortex pinning effects can detect the atomic-scale inhomogeneous superconducting order parameter in quasicrystals. We develop a numerical method to solve the Bogoliubov-de Gennes equations and gap equations in large systems, which is based on the localized-Krylov subspace and a sparse modeling technique. Two two-dimensional quasicrystals, the Penrose and Amman-Beenker tiling, are considered.