Puig, J., F. Elías, J. Aragón Sánchez, R. Cortés Maldonado, G. Rumi, G. Nieva, P. Pedrazzini, A. B. Kolton, and Y. Fasano. "Anisotropic suppression of hyperuniformity of elastic systems in media with planar disorder." Communications Materials 3 (2022): 32.
Abstract: Disordered hyperuniform materials with vanishing long-wavelength density fluctuations are attracting attention due to their unique physical properties. In these systems, the large-scale density fluctuations are strongly suppressed as in a perfect crystal, even though the system can be disordered like a liquid. Yet, hyperuniformity can be affected by the different types of quenched disorder unavoidably present in the host medium where constituents are nucleated. Here, we use vortex matter in superconductors as a model elastic system to study how planar correlated disorder impacts the otherwise hyperuniform structure nucleated in samples with weak point disorder. Planes of defects suppress hyperuniformity in an anisotropic fashion: while in the transverse direction to defects the long-wavelength density fluctuations are non-vanishing, in the longitudinal direction they are smaller and the system can eventually recover hyperuniformity for sufficiently thick samples. Our findings stress the need of considering the nature of disorder and thickness-dependent dimensional crossovers in the search for novel hyperuniform materials.
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Aragón Sánchez, J., R. Cortés Maldonado, M. I. Dolz, N. R. CejasBolecek, C. J. van der Beek, M. Konczykowski, and Y. Fasano. "Direct visualization of local interaction forces in Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8+δ vortex matter." Materials Today: Proceedings 14 (2019): 34–37.
Abstract: We study the local vortex-vortex interaction force fi of the structure frozen during a field-cooling process in an electron-irradiated Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8+δ sample. We compute this magnitude from snapshots of the vortex structure obtained via magnetic decoration experiments at various fields H in the same sample. Since the observed structures correspond to the equilibrium ones frozen at T∼Tirr(H)[1], at this temperature the local modulus of fi roughly equals the local pinning force at the decorated surface of the sample. We estimate the most probable local pinning force from the mode value of the fi(r)distribution, fpm. We found that fpm grows algebraically with H and in electron-irradiated samples is 50-20% smaller than for samples with columnar defects.
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Rumi, G., J. Aragón Sánchez, F. Elías, R. Cortés Maldonado, J. Puig, N. R. Cejas Bolecek, G. Nieva, M. Konczykowski, Y. Fasano, and A. B. Kolton. "Hyperuniform vortex patterns at the surface of type-II superconductors." Physical Review Research 1, no. 3 (2019): 033057.
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Aragón Sánchez, J., R. Cortés Maldonado, N. R. Cejas Bolecek, G. Rumi, P. Pedrazzini, M. I. Dolz, G. Nieva, C. J. van der Beek, M. Konczykowski, C. D. Dewhurst et al. "Unveiling the vortex glass phase in the surface and volume of a type-II superconductor." Communications Physics 2, no. 1 (2019): 143.
Abstract: Order-disorder transitions between glassy phases are common in nature and yet a comprehensive survey on the entailed structural changes is challenging since the constituents are in the micro-scale. Vortex matter in type-II superconductors is a model system where some of these experimental challenges can be tackled. Samples with point disorder present a glassy transition on increasing the density of vortices. A glassy yet quasi-crystalline phase, the Bragg glass, nucleates at low densities. The vortex glass stable at high densities is expected to be disordered, however its detailed structural properties remained experimentally elusive. Here we show that the vortex glass has large crystallites with in-plane positional displacements growing algebraically and short-range orientational order. Furthermore, the vortex glass has a finite and almost constant correlation length along the direction of vortices, in sharp contrast with strong entanglement. These results are important for the understanding of disorder-driven phase transitions in glassy condensed matter.
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