Abstract
The magnetic flux line lattice in type II superconductors serves as a useful system in which to study condensed matter flow, as its dynamic properties are tunable. Recent studies have shown a number of puzzling phenomena associated with vortex motion, including: low-frequency noise1,2,3,4,5 and slow voltage oscillations3,6; a history-dependent dynamic response7,8,9,10,11,12, and memory of the direction, amplitude duration and frequency of the previously applied current13,14; high vortex mobility for alternating current, but no apparent vortex motion for direct currents13,15,16; and strong suppression of an a.c. response by small d.c. bias13. Taken together, these phenomena are incompatible with current understanding of vortex dynamics. Here we report a generic mechanism that accounts for these observations. Our model, which is derived from investigations of the current distribution across single crystals of NbSe2, is based on a competition between the injection of a disordered vortex phase at the sample edges, and the dynamic annealing of this metastable disorder by the transport current. For an alternating current, only narrow regions near the edges are in the disordered phase, while for d.c. bias, most of the sample is in the disordered phase—preventing vortex motion because of more efficient pinning. The resulting spatial dependence of the disordered vortex system serves as an active memory of the previous history.
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Acknowledgements
We thank P. B. Littlewood for discussions. The work at the Weizmann Institute of Science was supported by the Israel Science Foundation—Centre of Excellence Program, by the US-Israel Binational Science Foundation (BSF), and by the Alhadeff research award. E.Y.A. was supported by the NSF.
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Paltiel, Y., Zeldov, E., Myasoedov, Y. et al. Dynamic instabilities and memory effects in vortex matter. Nature 403, 398–401 (2000). https://doi.org/10.1038/35000145
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/35000145
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