Chaotic dynamics of superconductor vortices in the plastic phase

TL;DR

This paper uses numerical simulations to demonstrate that vortex motion in disordered superconductors exhibits chaos, characterized by intermittency, positive Lyapunov exponents, broad-band noise, and low-dimensional strange attractors.

Contribution

It provides a novel chaos-theoretic interpretation of vortex dynamics in the plastic phase of superconductors, linking chaos indicators with experimental resistance peaks.

Findings

Intermittency routes to chaos identified in vortex dynamics.

Positive Lyapunov exponents and broad-band noise observed.

Chaotic vortex motion is low-dimensional.

Abstract

We present numerical simulation results of driven vortex lattices in presence of random disorder at zero temperature. We show that the plastic dynamics is readily understood in the framework of chaos theory. Intermittency "routes to chaos" have been clearly identified, and positive Lyapunov exponents and broad-band noise, both characteristic of chaos, are found to coincide with the differential resistance peak. Furthermore, the fractal dimension of the strange attractor reveals that the chaotic dynamics of vortices is low-dimensional.