Inertial mass of a superconducting vortex

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that the inertial mass of a superconducting vortex is significantly influenced by lattice displacements, with a derived formula showing it can surpass the vortex core mass in conventional superconductors.

Contribution

It provides a new theoretical calculation of the vortex mass considering lattice effects, highlighting their importance in superconducting vortex dynamics.

Findings

Lattice displacements contribute significantly to vortex mass.

Derived formula relates vortex mass to material parameters.

Vortex mass can exceed the core mass in certain superconductors.

Abstract

We show that a large contribution to the inertial mass of a moving superconducting vortex comes from transversal displacements of the crystal lattice. The corresponding part of the mass per unit length of the vortex line is $M_{l} = ({\rm m}_e^2c^{2}/64{\pi}{\alpha}^{2}{\mu}{\lambda}_{L}^{4})\ln({\lambda}_{L}/{\xi})$ , where ${\rm m}_{e}$ is the the bare electron mass, $c$ is the speed of light, ${\alpha}=e^{2}/{\hbar}c {\approx} 1/137$ is the fine structure constant, ${\mu}$ is the shear modulus of the solid, ${\lambda}_{L}$ is the London penetration length and ${\xi}$ is the coherence length. In conventional superconductors, this mass can be comparable to or even greater than the vortex core mass computed by Suhl.