Devil's Staircase and Disordering Transitions in Sliding Vortices and Wigner Crystals on Random Substrates with Transverse Driving

TL;DR

This paper uses numerical simulations to explore how random disorder affects the dynamical phases of sliding vortices and Wigner crystals under transverse driving, revealing devil's staircase structures and disordering transitions.

Contribution

It demonstrates the emergence of devil's staircase structures and disordering transitions in the transverse response of driven particles in disordered landscapes, extending previous theoretical predictions.

Findings

Weak disorder leads to a moving lattice with devil's staircase locking.

Strong disorder causes disordering transitions and stable channel formations.

Transverse response varies significantly with disorder strength and potential landscape.

Abstract

Using numerical simulations we show that, in the presence of random quenched disorder, sliding superconducting vortices and Wigner crystals pass through a variety of dynamical phases when an additional transverse driving force is applied. If the disorder is weak, the driven particles form a moving lattice and the transverse response shows a devil's staircase structure as the net driving force vector locks with the symmetry directions of the moving lattice, in agreement with the predictions of Le Doussal and Giamarchi. For strong disorder, and particularly for smoothly varying potential landscapes, the transverse response consists of a sequence of disordering transitions with an intervening formation of stable channel structures.