Abstract
Experiments with the crossover superconductors between standard types I and II revealed exotic magnetic flux patterns where Meissner domains coexist with islands of the vortex lattice as well as with vortex clusters and chains. Until now a comprehensive theory for such configurations has not been presented. We solve this old-standing fundamental problem by developing an approach which combines the perturbation expansion of the microscopic theory with statistical simulations and which requires no prior assumption on the vortex distribution. Our study offers the most complete picture of the interchange of the superconductivity types available so far. The mixed state in this regime reveals a rich manifold of exotic configurations, which reproduce available experimental results. Our work introduces a pattern formation mechanism that originates from the self-duality of the theory that is universal and not sensitive to the microscopic details.
Highlights
Experiments with the crossover superconductors between standard types I and II revealed exotic magnetic flux patterns where Meissner domains coexist with islands of the vortex lattice as well as with vortex clusters and chains
Detailed investigations of the magnetic response revealed a class of materials with κ ~ 1 whose magnetic properties belong to neither of these two common types[2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9]. Experiments demonstrated that such crossover or inter-type (IT) materials develop the so-called intermediate mixed state (IMS), where the magnetic field penetrates a superconductor but forms a rich manifold of exotic spatial configurations made of Meissner domains coexisting with islands of the vortex lattice, vortex clusters, chains, etc
In the limit T → Tc the BCS theory reduces to the GL equations which have the critical point κ = κ0 separating the superconductivity types I and II
Summary
Experiments with the crossover superconductors between standard types I and II revealed exotic magnetic flux patterns where Meissner domains coexist with islands of the vortex lattice as well as with vortex clusters and chains. Detailed investigations of the magnetic response revealed a class of materials with κ ~ 1 whose magnetic properties belong to neither of these two common types[2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9] Experiments demonstrated that such crossover or inter-type (IT) materials develop the so-called intermediate mixed state (IMS), where the magnetic field penetrates a superconductor but forms a rich manifold of exotic spatial configurations made of Meissner domains coexisting with islands of the vortex lattice, vortex clusters, chains, etc. Owing to these difficulties theory efforts focused on studying properties of few-vortex systems, such as the pair vortex interaction[12,13,15,16,17] or on the analysis of stability of the periodic Abrikosov lattice[16,18,19,20] in order to determine boundaries of the IT domain
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