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Current-driven production of vortex-antivortex pairs in planar Josephson junction arrays and phase cracks in long-range order

Journal Article · · Scientific Reports
 [1];  [1];  [1];  [2];  [3]
  1. Univ. de Murcia, Murcia (Spain)
  2. Argonne National Lab. (ANL), Chicago, IL (United States); Univ. of Chicago, Chicago, IL (United States)
  3. Old Dominion Univ., Norfolk, VA (United States)

Proliferation of topological defects like vortices and dislocations plays a key role in the physics of systems with long-range order, particularly, superconductivity and superfluidity in thin films, plasticity of solids, and melting of atomic monolayers. Topological defects are characterized by their topological charge reflecting fundamental symmetries and conservation laws of the system. Conservation of topological charge manifests itself in extreme stability of static topological defects because destruction of a single defect requires overcoming a huge energy barrier proportional to the system size. However, the stability of driven topological defects remains largely unexplored. Here we address this issue and investigate numerically a dynamic instability of moving vortices in planar arrays of Josephson junctions. We show that a single vortex driven by sufficiently strong current becomes unstable and destroys superconductivity by triggering a chain reaction of self-replicating vortex-antivortex pairs forming linear of branching expanding patterns. Furthermore this process can be described in terms of propagating phase cracks in long-range order with far-reaching implications for dynamic systems of interacting spins and atoms hosting magnetic vortices and dislocations.

Research Organization:
Argonne National Lab. (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES) (SC-22). Materials Sciences & Engineering Division
Grant/Contract Number:
AC02-06CH11357
OSTI ID:
1481281
Journal Information:
Scientific Reports, Journal Name: Scientific Reports Journal Issue: 1 Vol. 8; ISSN 2045-2322
Publisher:
Nature Publishing GroupCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

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