Thermal Suppression of Strong Pinning

TL;DR

This paper investigates how thermal fluctuations influence vortex pinning in layered superconductors, revealing a sharp transition in critical current due to the interplay of layering, disorder, and thermal effects.

Contribution

It introduces the concept of variable-range thermal smoothing and analyzes the temperature-dependent evolution of non-linear features in vortex pinning.

Findings

Thermal fluctuations cause a sharp jump in critical current.

Layering and electromagnetic interactions significantly affect vortex dynamics.

Thermal smoothing modifies the non-linear current-voltage features.

Abstract

We study vortex pinning in layered type-II superconductors in the presence of uncorrelated disorder for decoupled layers. Introducing the new concept of variable-range thermal smoothing, we describe the interplay between strong pinning and thermal fluctuations. We discuss the appearance and analyze the evolution in temperature of two distinct non-linear features in the current-voltage characteristics. We show how the combination of layering and electromagnetic interactions leads to a sharp jump in the critical current for the onset of glassy response as a function of temperature.