Universal Phase Diagram for Vortex States of Layered Superconductors in Strong Magnetic Fields

Abstract

We report on a Monte Carlo study of the lowest-Landau-level limit of the Lawrence-Doniach model for a layered superconductor. We have studied order parameter correlation functions for indications of the broken translational symmetry and the off-diagonal long range order present in the mean-field-theory vortex lattice. Our results are consistent with a single first order phase transition between a low temperature 3D vortex solid phase, with both broken translational symmetry and off-diagonal long range order, and a high temperature vortex liquid phase with no broken symmetries. We construct a universal phase diagram in terms of dimensionless parameters characterizing intra-layer and inter-layer couplings. The universal phase boundary extracted from our simulations and the associated latent heats and magnetization jumps are compared with experiment and with numerical results obtained for related models.