Plastic Flow, Voltage Bursts, and Vortex Avalanches in Superconductors

TL;DR

This study uses large-scale simulations to analyze vortex avalanches in superconductors, revealing how vortex motion and voltage bursts relate to pin density and flow channels, aligning with experimental observations.

Contribution

It provides new insights into vortex flow patterns and avalanche size distributions during superconducting vortex avalanches, connecting simulations with experimental results.

Findings

Voltage bursts correspond to pulsing vortex movement along channels

Increased pin density causes a crossover in vortex motion behavior

Avalanche size distributions become broader with higher pin density

Abstract

We use large-scale parallel simulations to compute the motion of superconducting magnetic vortices during avalanches triggered by small field increases. We find that experimentally observable voltage bursts correspond to pulsing vortex movement along branched channels or winding chains, and relate vortex flow images to features of statistical distributions. As pin density is increased, a crossover occurs from interstitial motion in narrow easy-flow winding channels with typical avalanche sizes, to pin-to-pin motion in broad channels, characterized by a very broad distribution of sizes. Our results are consistent with recent experiments.