C.J. Olson and C. Reichhardt
Theoretical Division and Center for Nonlinear Studies,
Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos,
New Mexico 87545
R. T. Scalettar and G. T. Zimanyi
Department of Physics, University of California - Davis,
Davis, California 95616
Niels Gronbech-Jensen
Department of Applied Science, University of California, Davis,
California 95616
and NERSC, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley,
California 94720
(Received 3 July 2002; published 30 May 2003)
We examine metastable and transient effects both above and below the first-order decoupling line in a 3D simulation of magnetically interacting pancake vortices. We observe pronounced transient and history effects as well as supercooling and superheating between the 3D coupled, ordered and 2D decoupled, disordered phases. In the disordered supercooled state as a function of DC driving, reordering occurs through the formation of growing moving channels of the ordered phase. No channels form in the superheated region; instead the ordered state is homogeneously destroyed. When a sequence of current pulses is applied we observe memory effects. We find a ramp rate dependence of the V(I) curves on both sides of the decoupling transition. The critical current that we obtain depends on how the system is prepared.
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevB.67.184523 PACS number(s): 74.25.Qt, 74.25.Sv
Vortices in superconductors represent an ideal system in which to study the effect of quenched disorder on elastic media. The competition between the flux-line interactions, which order the vortex lattice, and the defects in the sample, which disorder the vortex lattice, produce a remarkable variety of collective behavior.1 One prominent example is the peak effect in low temperature superconductors, which appears near Hc2 when a transition from an ordered to a strongly pinned disordered state occurs in the vortex lattice. 2-8 In high temperature superconductors, particularly BSCCO (Bi2Sr2CaCuOy) samples, a striking "second peak" phenomenon is observed in which a dramatic increase in the critical current occurs for increasing fields. It has been proposed that this is an order-disorder or three-dimensional (3D) to 2D transition. 9-13
Recently there has been renewed interest in transient effects, which have been observed in voltage response versus time curves in low temperature superconductors. 5-7,14-17 In these experiments the voltage response increases or decays with time, depending on how the vortex lattice was prepared. The existence of transient states suggests that the disordered phase can be supercooled into the ordered region, 18 producing an increasing voltage response, whereas the ordered phase may be superheated into the disordered region, giving a decaying response. In addition to transient effects, pronounced memory effects and hysteretic V(I) curves have been observed near the peak effect in low temperature materials. 2,4-7,16,17,19-21 Memory effects are also seen in simulations 22 Xiao et al.7 have shown that transient behavior can lead to a strong dependence of the critical current on the current ramp rate. Recent neutron scattering experiments in conjunction with ac shaking have provided more direct evidence of supercooling and superheating near the peak effect. 23 Experiments on BSCCO have revealed that the high field disordered state can be supercooled to fields well below the second peak line.24 Furthermore, transport experiments in BSCCO have shown metastability in the zero-field-cooled state near the second peak as well as hysteretic V(I) curves, 25 and magnetooptic imaging has revealed the coexistence of ordered and disordered phases.26 Hysteretic and memory effects have also been observed near the second peak in YBCO (YBa2Cu3O7-d). 27-29
The presence of metastable states and superheating/supercooling effects strongly suggests that the order-disorder transitions in these different materials are first order in nature. The many similarities also point to a universal behavior between the peak effect of low temperature superconductors and the peak effect and second peak effect of high temperature superconductors.
A key question in all these systems is the nature of the microscopic dynamics of the vortices in the transient states; particularly, whether plasticity or the opening of flowing channels are involved.6 The recent experiments have made it clear that a proper characterization of the static and dynamic phase diagrams must take into account these metastable states, and therefore an understanding of these effects at a microscopic level is crucial. Despite the growing amount of experimental work on metastability and transient effects in vortex matter near the peak effect transition, 5-7 these effects have not yet been investigated numerically.
In this work we numerically study magnetically interacting pancake vortices driven through quenched point disorder. As a function of applied field, temperature, or interlayer coupling the model exhibits a sharp 3D (coupled, ordered phase) to 2D (decoupled, disordered phase) transition, consistent with theoretical expectations,12,13 that is associated with a large change in the critical current.30 Near the disordering transition, we find strong metastability and transient effects. A metastable state is a thermodynamic state that is out of equilibrium, which persists for a time longer than the characteristic relaxation time of the system at equilibrium. 31 By supercooling or superheating the ordered and disordered phases, we find increasing or decreasing transient voltage response curves, depending on the amplitude of the drive pulse and the proximity to the disordering transition. In the supercooled transient states a growing ordered channel of flowing vortices forms. No channels form in the superheated region but instead the ordered state is homogeneously destroyed. We observe memory effects when a sequence of pulses is applied, as well as ramp rate dependence and hysteresis in the V(I) curves. The critical current we obtain depends on how the system is prepared.
We consider a 3D layered superconductor containing an equal number of
pancake vortices in each layer, interacting magnetically.
We neglect the Josephson coupling, which is
a reasonable approximation for highly anisotropic materials.
The overdamped equation of motion for vortex i at T=0 is
The total number of
pancakes is Nv, and
and zij are the distance between
vortex i and vortex j in cylindrical coordinates. We impose
periodic boundary conditions in the x and y directions and open
boundaries in the z direction. The magnetic interaction energy
between pancakes is 32,33
,
where
,
,
R = 22.6
, the maximum in-plane distance,
=
/(4
)2,
d=0.005
is the
interlayer spacing as in BSCCO,
sm is the coupling strength, and
is the London penetration depth.
The viscosity
=Bc2
/
, where
is the normal-state resistivity. Time is
measured in units of
/f0*.
For example, in the case of a BSCCO sample
2
m thick, taking
= 250 nm,
= 1.8 nm, and
= 2.8 m
cm
gives the value of a single time step as 0.4 ns.
We model the pinning
as Np short range attractive
parabolic traps that are randomly distributed in each
layer.
The pinning interaction is
,
where the pin radius
=0.2
,
the pinning force
is fp=0.02f0*, and
f0*=
/
.
We fix the temperature T=0.
To vary the applied magnetic field H, we fix the number of vortices
in the system and change the system size, thereby
changing the vortex
density nv. The pin density remains fixed.
We use L=16 layers throughout
this work, and
except where mentioned, we focus on a
system that ranges from
12.9
x 12.9
to 14.8
x 14.8
,
with
a pin density of np=1.0/
in each of the layers.
We have also studied a sample with stronger, denser pinning of
=0.1
,
fp=0.08f0*, and
np=8.0/
,
of size
5.1
x 5.1
to 6.9
x 6.9
In each case there are Nv=80 vortices per layer, giving
a total of 1280 pancake vortices.
For sufficiently strong disorder, the vortices
in this model show a sharp 3D-2D
decoupling transition as a
function of coupling strength sm,
vortex density H, 30,34
or temperature. 34,35
A dynamic 2D-3D transition can also occur.
30
There are actually two disordering transitions that occur in the
model: a decoupling transition from 3D to 2D, and an in-plane disordering
transition. In our studies, we find that these two transitions
always coincide, and appear as a single transition from a 3D state that
is ordered in the plane and coupled between planes, to a 2D state that is
decoupled and disordered in the plane.
We denote the magnetic field at which the static 3D-2D transition occurs
as nvc, and the coupling strength at which the transition occurs
as smc.
For the main system considered here,
a transition from ordered 3D flux lines
to disordered, decoupled 2D pancakes occurs at
smc=1.2 with nv=0.3/
or at
nvc=0.38 with sm=0.7.
The coupling/decoupling transition occurs twice as a function
of field, 8
once at low fields when the vortex
lines form as the effective pinning strength begins to decrease away
from the single vortex pinning regime,
and a second time at higher fields when the magnetic interactions
among vortex pancakes in a given plane cause the pancakes in different
planes to decouple. We examine the higher field transition
in the sample with strong, dense pinning, where
nvc=3.0
at sm=0.7.
The same effects described here also
appear on either side of
a temperature-induced 3D-2D transition.
We illustrate the difference in critical current between
the
coupled and decoupled vortex phases in Fig. 1. As a function of
interlayer coupling sm, we show the critical current
fc, obtained by summing
and identifying the drive fd at which
Vx > 0.0005.
Also plotted is a measure of the z-axis correlation,
Cz=1-< (|ri,L-ri,L+1| / a0/2))
(a0/2-|ri,L-ri,L+1| >,
where a0 is the vortex lattice constant, and the average is
taken over all pancakes in the system.
The ordered phase has a much lower critical current,
fco = 0.0008f0*, than the
disordered phase,
fcdo = 0.0105f0*.

,
and fp=0.02f0*,
showing the sharp transition from coupled behavior at
sm
1.2
to decoupled behavior at sm > 1.2.
To observe transient effects, we supercool the lattice by
annealing the system at sm < smc
into a disordered,
decoupled configuration.
Starting from this state, we set
sm > smc
such that the pancakes would be ordered and coupled at equilibrium,
and at t=0 we apply a fixed drive fd for 400000 steps.
Application of a driving current is only one possible way in which
the equilibrium configuration can be regained. The equilibrium
state can also be reached via thermal fluctuations, through gradients
in the magnetic field, 24
or by applying a rapidly
fluctuating magnetic field.36
In Fig. 2 we show the time-dependent voltage
response
Vx for several different
drives fd for a sample which would be coupled in equilibrium,
with sm = 2.0,
that has been prepared in a decoupled state at sm=0.5. For
fd < 0.0053
0.0001f0* the system remains pinned
in a decoupled disordered state.
For
fd
0.0053f0*
a time dependent increasing response occurs.
Vx does not rise
instantly but only after a specific waiting time tw.
The
rate of increase in Vx grows as the amplitude of the
fd increases. As shown in Figs. 3(a) and 3(b) the
z-axis correlation Cz
exhibits the same behavior as Vx, indicating that the
vortices
are becoming more aligned in the z direction as time passes.
If the vortices move in response to thermal activation,
a voltage response of the form
Vx(t)=V0(1-e-Wt)
should appear15.
Since our simulation is at T=0, we would not expect
thermal activation to apply.
Instead, the response we observe can be fit by an exponential form
only at long times, such as t
30000 in
Fig. 3, when Vx is beginning to saturate.
At intermediate times [5000 < t < 30000 in Figs. 3(a) and 3(b)]
the increase in Vx
and Cz is roughly linear with time.
As we will show below, this linear increase indicates that an ordered
regime is growing at a constant rate.
The amount of time required for the system to reach a steady voltage
response level is indicative of the fact that we have started the
system in a metastable state. If we prepare the lattice in its
equilibrium configuration of coupled lines and then apply the same
currents shown in Fig. 2, the voltage response reaches its full, steady
value within less than 100 steps, whereas in Fig. 2, 10000 to 50000 steps
are required.


To determine how the vortex lattice is moving when Vx is nearly zero (during tw), linearly increasing, and saturating exponentially, we show the vortex positions and trajectories in the supercooled sample in Fig. 4. Here a series of images have been taken from a sample in Fig. 2 with sm=2.0 for fd=0.007f0* for different times. In Fig. 4(a) at t=2500 the initial state is disordered. In Fig. 4(b) at t=7500 significant vortex motion occurs through the nucleation of a single channel of moving vortices. At lower drives the channel gradually appears during the waiting time tw, but at fd=0.007f0 the channel nucleates relatively rapidly. Vortices outside the channel remain pinned. In Fig. 4(c) at t=12500 the channel is wider, and vortices inside the channel are ordered and have recoupled. The pinned vortices remain in the disordered state. During the transient motion there is a coexistence of ordered and disordered states. If the drive is shut off the ordered domain is pinned but remains ordered, and when the drive is re-applied the ordered domain moves again. The vortices inside the ordered channel tend to align their lattice vector in the direction of the drive.37 The increase in both Vx and Cz is roughly linear in time during the period when the fully formed channel is expanding outward. Since the velocity of the moving vortices is constant, a linear increase in Vx indicates that the number of moving vortices is also increasing linearly in time. Vortices do not begin to move until the edge of the ordered channel reaches them. Therefore, the linear increase in Vx indicates that the outward growth of the ordered channel is proceeding at a constant rate. In Fig. 4(d) for t=20000 almost all of the vortices have reordered and the channel width is the size of the sample. After this time slow rearrangements of the vortices into a more ordered configuration occur, and Vx switches over to an exponential saturation with time. Thus in the supercooled case we observe nucleation of a microscopic transport channel, followed by expansion of the channel. We note that in recent scanning Hall probe 38 and magneto-optic 39 experiments, coexisting ordered and disordered vortex phases have been imaged, and are associated with history effects and anomalous voltage responses of the vortex lattice.

As illustrated by the lower curve
in Fig. 5, the waiting time tw decreases
rapidly as the applied driving
force fd increases, until for
fd > 0.0065f0*
there is no measurable
waiting time.
Since a channel is opening along the length of the system during
the waiting time, tw should be proportional to the amount
of time required for vortices to move along this channel.
This is given by:
tw
Lx/fd ,
where Lx is the system size along the length of the channel.
A fit of tw to 1/fd is shown in Fig. 5 by
the dashed line.

1/fd.
Circles (upper curve):
Response saturation time ts for the same sample.
Dotted line indicates a fit to
ts
(fd-0.0053)-1.
The time ts required for the response to saturate
decreases with fd for fd < 0.0065f0*,
as indicated by the upper curve in Fig. 5.
For tw < t < ts, the ordered channel begins to spread
through the sample in the direction transverse to the applied driving
force. The motion of this ordered front resembles the transverse
depinning of a longitudinally driven interface. The faster the
interface is moving in the longitudinal direction, the lower the
transverse depinning force is, since the interface becomes
less rough. In a model for the transverse depinning of a longitudinally
driven elastic string
40, the transverse depinning force
fdpT was found
to decrease as
with
= 2/3.
In the case of the moving front of ordered vortices,
an effective transverse force
feffT on the front is provided by the
interactions between the pinned and moving vortices.
If we assume that these interactions do not change with fd, since
fd is not being applied in the transverse direction, then
feffT remains constant while
fdpT decreases with
increasing applied drive fd. As a result, the ordered front
propagates outward more
quickly as fd increases,
and the saturation time ts required for the
ordered channel to fill the entire sample decreases.
In Fig. 5 the dotted line indicates a fit to
ts
(fd-fd0)-1,
with fd0=0.0053.
For fd < 0.0053f0*,
there was no voltage response to the applied
current over the time period we considered (indicating that tw > 400000)
and the vortices remained stationary in the supercooled state.
The apparent discontinuity in tw from a finite to an unmeasured value
arises only because our simulations were performed for a finite amount
of time.
We next consider transient effects produced by superheating the lattice.
In Fig. 6 we show a superheated system
at sm=0.7 prepared in the ordered state by
artificially placing the vortices
into perfectly aligned columns at
t=0. Here we find
a large initial Vx
response that decays.
With larger fd the decay takes an increasingly
long time.
The time scale for the decay is much shorter
than the time scale
for the increasing response in Fig. 2.
As illustrated in Figs. 3(c) and 3(d), the z-axis
correlation Cz decays more rapidly than the overall voltage
response Vx, indicating that vortex motion continues to
occur even after the vortex lines have been broken apart into
individual pancakes. The form of Vx cannot be fit by any
simple function over a significant period of time. The decay
of Cz, however, is nearly linear with time before saturating
at t
3500.
For fd
0.011f0*
the voltage does not decay
completely away to zero, but the vortices continue to move in
the disordered state.

The decaying response of the superheated vortex state resembles
the yield drop curves observed in crystalline solids, as first
noted in low-Tc materials by Good and Kramer.
16
In a yield drop, the stress required to maintain a constant shear
strain rate decreases with time. Such a drop occurs when the
crystalline solid has a low initial concentration of defects,
and the drop is associated with a proliferation of dislocations
inside the crystal. In the case of the
superheated vortex lattice, a transition from the ordered to the
disordered state occurs and the vortex velocity drops. Good and Kramer
find that the total drop in the response of the vortex lattice increases
linearly with the applied voltage.
16 To paraphrase their
argument, the voltage response of the lattice can
be written
Vx=FmRffd,
where Fm is the fraction
of the vortex lattice that is moving, and Rf is the flux
flow resistance, or the slope of the V(I) curve at high currents.
The change in voltage response from the initial peak, where
Fm0=1 and the entire lattice is moving, to the saturated
plateau where Fmf=0 and all of the vortices have
repinned, can then be written
Vx0-Vxf=(Fm0-Fmf)Rffd,
or
Vx=Rffd.
In Fig. 7
we plot the difference
Vx between Vx at the
peak and plateau as a function of applied drive fd, and
find a linear relation with slope Rf=0.93, in good agreement
with the expected value Rf=1. There is a deviation from
linearity for fd > 0.010 because at higher drives,
Fmf > 0 since all of the vortices do not repin.

Vx
between the peak and plateau values
of the decreasing response curves as a function of applied drive
fd.
The vortex positions and trajectories for a superheated sample with sm= 0.7 and fd = 0.006f0*, as in Fig. 6, are shown in Figs. 8(a)-8(d). In Fig. 8(a) the initial vortex state is ordered. In Figs. 8(b)-8(d) the vortex lattice becomes disordered and pinned in a homogeneous manner rather than through nucleation. Each vortex line is decoupled by the point pinning as it moves until the entire line dissociates and is pinned. Since all of the vortex lines decouple simultaneously, this decaying response process occurs much more rapidly than the increasing response of the supercooled sample, which required nucleation and growth of a channel.

In Fig. 9 we demonstrate the presence of a memory effect by abruptly shutting off fd at t=400 for 400 time steps. The vortex motion stops when the drive is shut off, and when fd is re-applied Vx resumes at the same point. We find such memory on both the increasing and decreasing response curves. Since we are at zero temperature, it is the applied current, and not thermal effects, that is responsible for the vortex motion, and thus the vortices cannot adjust their positions in the absence of a driving current. The response curves and memory effect seen here are very similar to those observed in experiments.7,16

We next consider the effect of changing the rate
fd
at which the driving force
is increased on V(I) in both
superheated and supercooled systems.
Figure 10(a) shows Vx versus fd, which is
analogous to a V(I) curve, for
the supercooled system at sm=2.0
prepared in a disordered state.
Vx remains low during a fast ramp,
when the vortices in the strongly pinned disordered state
cannot reorganize into the more ordered state.
There is also
considerable hysteresis
since the vortices reorder at higher drives producing a
higher value of Vx during the ramp-down.
For the slower ramp the vortices have time
to reorganize into the weakly pinned ordered state,
and remain ordered, producing no hysteresis in
V(I).

fd
of 0.0001 f0*
every 2000 time steps.
Bottom (heavy line):
fd = 0.001 f0*.
(b): V(I) for a superheated system at
sm = 0.7. From left to right,
fd =
(fast) 0.02 f0*, 0.01 f0*,
0.005 f0*, 0.002 f0*,
0.001 f0*,
0.0002 f0*, and
0.0001 f0* (slow).
In a superheated sample, the reverse behavior occurs.
Figure 10(b) shows V(I) curves at different
d
for a system with sm = 0.7 prepared in the ordered
state. Here, the fast ramp has a higher value of Vx
corresponding to the ordered state
while the slow ramp has a low value of Vx.
During a slow initial ramp in the superheated state the
vortices gradually disorder through rearrangements but
there is no net vortex flow through the sample. Such
a phase was proposed by Xiao et al.7
and seen in recent experiments on BSCCO samples.
24 At the slower
fd,
we find negative dV/dI characteristics
which resemble those seen in
low- 14,41-44
and high- 45
temperature superconductors.
Here, V(I) initially increases
as the
vortices flow in the ordered state,
but the vortices decouple as the lattice moves,
increasing fc and dropping
V(I) back to zero,
resulting in an N-shaped
characteristic.
To demonstrate the effect of vortex lattice disorder on the critical current, in Fig. 11 we plot the equilibrium fc along with fc obtained for the supercooled system, in which each sample is prepared in a state with sm = 0.5, and then sm is raised to a new value above smc before fc is measured. The disorder in the supercooled state produces a value of fc between the two extrema observed in the equilibrium state. Note that the sharp transition in fc associated with equilibrium systems is now smooth. A similar increase in the critical current when the vortex lattice has been prepared in a disordered state, rather than in an ordered state, has also been observed experimentally as a history effect. 15,46-51

We find the same metastable and history-dependent effects
described above on either
side of a magnetic-field driven disordering transition. To
demonstrate this, in Fig. 12(a) we show Vx
for several different drives fd for
a sample with
dense, strong pinning
(fp=0.08f0*,
np=8.0/
)
at
nv=2.5/
,
where a field-induced decoupling transition occurs
above nv=3.0/
.
The sample shown in Fig. 12(a)
would be coupled in equilibrium but has
been prepared in a decoupled state. For
fd
0.009f0*
we observe a time dependent increasing response similar to that
shown in Fig. 2. The rising response is associated
with the formation of a channel of ordered, coupled vortices as
illustrated in Fig. 13. In Fig. 12(b) we
show Vx for the same sample in a superheated state at
nv=3.1/
,
where the sample would be disordered in
equilibrium but has been prepared in an ordered state. Here we
find a transient decreasing response as the lattice disorders,
similar to the response in Fig. 6. Images of
the sample before and after the current pulse is applied are
illustrated in Fig. 14, showing the transition from
an ordered to a disordered state. The presence of transients
also leads to a ramp-rate dependence of the V(I) curve, and
in Fig. 15 we illustrate the appearance of N-shaped
characteristics in the superheated system when the current
is ramped at increasing rates for the same sample.


and fd=0.009 f0*,
seen from the top of the sample, at
times: (a) t=5000; (b) t=7500; (c) t=10000; (d) t=12500;
(e) t=15000; (f) 20000.
An ordered channel
forms in the sample and grows outward.


. From left
to right,
fd= (fast) 0.01 f0*,
0.005 f0*,
0.002 f0*, 0.001f0*,
0.0002f0*, and
0.0001f0* (slow).
Our simulation does not contain a surface barrier which can inject disorder at the edges. Such an effect is proposed to explain experiments in which AC current pulses induce an increasing response as the vortices reorder but DC pulses produce a decaying response.6,8 We observe no difference between AC and DC drives.
In low temperature superconductors, a rapid increase in z-direction vortex wandering occurs simultaneously with vortex disordering, 23 suggesting that the change in z-axis correlations may be crucial in these systems as well. Our results, along with recent experiments on layered superconductors, suggest that the transient response seen in low temperature materials should also appear in layered materials.
In summary we have investigated transient and metastable states near the 3D-2D transition by supercooling or superheating the system. We find voltage-response curves and memory effects that are very similar to those observed in experiments, and we identify the microscopic vortex dynamics associated with these transient features. In the supercooled case the vortex motion occurs through nucleation of a channel of ordered moving vortices followed by an increase in the channel width over time. In the superheated case the ordered phase homogeneously disorders. We also demonstrate that the measured critical current depends on the vortex lattice preparation and on the current ramp rate.
We acknowledge helpful discussions with E. Andrei, S. Bhattacharya, X.S. Ling, Z.L. Xiao, and E. Zeldov. This work was supported by CLC and CULAR (LANL/UC), by NSF-DMR-9985978, by the Director, Office of Adv. Scientific Comp. Res., Div. of Math., Information and Comp. Sciences, U.S. DOE Contract NO. DE-AC03-76SF00098, and by the U.S. Dept. of Energy under Contract No. W-7405-ENG-36.
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