The Structure of the Vortex Liquid at the Surface of a Layered Superconductor

TL;DR

This paper uses a density-functional approach to analyze vortex density distributions at the surface of layered superconductors, revealing persistent fluctuations near the freezing transition and calculating the surface barrier height.

Contribution

It introduces a mean field density-functional method to study inhomogeneous vortex densities and surface effects in layered superconductors.

Findings

Persistent vortex density fluctuations near the freezing transition.

Calculated the height of the Bean-Livingston surface barrier.

Analyzed vortex interactions with image vortices within a mean field approximation.

Abstract

A density-functional approach is used to calculate the inhomogeneous vortex density distribution in the flux liquid phase at the planar surface of a layered superconductor, where the external magnetic field is perpendicular to the superconducting layers and parallel to the surface. The interactions with image vortices are treated within a mean field approximation as a functional of the vortex density. Near the freezing transition strong vortex density fluctuations are found to persist far into the bulk liquid. We also calculate the height of the Bean-Livingston surface barrier.