Publisher’s Note: Dynamic Reorganization of Vortex Matter into Partially Disordered Lattices [Phys. Rev. Lett.115, 067001 (2015)]

AC dynamic reorganization and critical phase transitions in superconducting vortex matter

“…By applying short current pulses (in this particular example 100 ns pulses), the authors can identify a threshold current amplitude I * below which the measurement is non invasive. This result is shown in figure 6 results, in those cases associated with dynamic history effects induced by large AC shaking fields [39,52,54,91]. To experimentally probe oscillatory dynamic effects, a shaking procedure is applied at certain temperatures: The linear susceptibility measurements are paused and N cycles of a sinusoidal shaking field with a larger amplitude H sh is applied before returning to the smaller H AC in order to resume the non-invasive measurements.…”

“…When a superconductor is cooled from the normal state in an external DC magnetic field (field-cooled (FC)), across the ODT, energy barriers may trap the VL in disordered metastable configurations. In clean and doped NbSe 2 single crystals, as well as in Nb samples, FC disordered VL have been directly observed by Small Angle Neutron Scattering (SANS) experiments [24,39,55,[72][73][74] and Scanning Tunneling Microscopy (STM) images [53,58]. In these low temperature disordered configurations the VL is strongly pinned, displaying a large effective j c .…”

“…In these low temperature disordered configurations the VL is strongly pinned, displaying a large effective j c . However, by applying high transport current densities [24,[47][48][49] or large oscillatory shaking magnetic fields [39,52], the system overcomes energy barriers and reaches the ordered BG phase, which has lower effective pinning.…”

“…On the other hand, the dynamics of these systems driven by alternating (AC) forces has received increasing attention. An amount of work, carried out during the last two decades, showed that AC driven systems display particular characteristics [33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46], which are not directly an extension from the corresponding DC regimes, and may be dynamically reorganized into different configurations.…”

“…History effects and dynamic reorganization in superconducting vortex lattices (VLs) [39,42,43,[47][48][49][50][51][52][53][54] are generally found in the vicinity of an order-disorder transition (ODT) [55][56][57][58], whose fingerprint is the sudden rise of the effective pinning, known as Peak Effect (PE) [59,60]. This anomaly is mostly observed in superconducting materials with randomly distributed pinning centers.…”