Stability of Elastic Glass Phases in Random Field XY Magnets and Vortex Lattices in Type II Superconductors

TL;DR

This paper analyzes the stability of elastic glass phases in 3D disordered systems, showing that certain vortex and magnetic phases remain stable against dislocation formation due to positive dislocation loop energies.

Contribution

It develops a renormalization group framework to demonstrate the stability of elastic glass phases in random field XY magnets and vortex lattices in superconductors.

Findings

Elastic glass phase remains stable with positive dislocation loop energy.

Existence of a dislocation-free Bragg glass phase in dirty Type II superconductors.

Stability persists even after considering large dislocation loops.

Abstract

A description of a dislocation-free elastic glass phase in terms of domain walls is developed and used as the basis of a renormalization group analysis of the energetics of dislocation loops added to the system. It is found that even after optimizing over possible paths of large dislocation loops, their energy is still very likely to be positive when the dislocation core energy is large. This implies the existence of an equilibrium elastic glass phase in three dimensional random field X-Y magnets, and a dislocation free, bond-orientationally ordered ``Bragg glass'' phase of vortices in dirty Type II superconductors.