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Vortex lattice melting in layered superconductors with periodic columnar pins

Chandan Dasgupta, Oriol T. Valls

cond-mat.supr-conarXiv:cond-mat/0106274

Abstract

The melting transition of the vortex lattice in highly anisotropic, layered superconductors with commensurate, periodic columnar pins is studied in a geometry where magnetic field and columnar pins are normal to the layers. Thermodynamic properties and equilibrium density distributions are obtained from numerical minimizations of an appropriate free-energy functional. We find a line of first-order transitions that ends at a critical point as the pin concentration is increased. A simple Landau theory providing a semi-quantitative explanation of the numerical results is proposed.

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