Sliding elastic lattice: an explanation of the motion of superconducting vortices

Abstract

We introduce a system where an elastic lattice of particles is moved slowly at a constant velocity under the influence of a local external potential, construct a rigid-body model through simplification processes, and show that the two systems produce similar results. Then, we apply our model to a superconducting vortex system and produce path patterns similar to the ones reported in [Lee et al., Phys. Rev. B 84, 060515 (2011)] suggesting that the reasoning of the simplification processes in this paper can be a possible explanation of the experimentally observed phenomenon.