Creep of superconducting vortices in the limit of vanishing temperature: A fingerprint of off-equilibrium dynamics

Abstract

We theoretically study the creep of vortex matter in superconductors. The low temperatures experimental phenomenology, previously interpreted in terms of ``quantum tunnelling'' of vortices, is reproduced by Monte Carlo simulations of a purely ``classical'' vortex model. We demonstrate that a non-zero creep rate in the limit of vanishing temperature is to be expected in systems with slow relaxations as a consequence of their off-equilibrium evolution in a complex free energy landscape.