Evaporation of a single vortex line in a weakly coupled multilayered superconductor.

Abstract

A single Abrikosov line is considered in a field perpendicular to the layers in superconductors with Josephson coupling of the layers. It is shown that the vortex line evaporates above some critical temperature ${\mathit{T}}^{\mathrm{*}}$ in compounds with perpendicular superconducting correlation length ${\ensuremath{\xi}}_{\mathit{z}}$(0)\ensuremath{\ll}d/\ensuremath{\kappa} where \ensuremath{\kappa} is the Ginzburg parameter and d is the interlayer distance. In a system with identical layers, ${\mathit{T}}^{\mathrm{*}}$ coincides with the critical temperature of the Kosterlitz-Thouless transition.