2004/11/30 by E. Smørgrav, Eivind Smorgrav, Jo Smiseth +4 · 1 citation
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Condensed Matter Physics #High-pressure geophysics and materials #Physics of Superconductivity and Magnetism #cond-mat.supr-con #hep-ph #hep-th
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.94.096401
published as Phys.Rev.Lett. 94 (2005) 096401 · 4 pages, 3 figures. Figure 3 updated. References added. To be published in Physical Review Letters
arxiv created 2005/02/04 · openalex publication_date 2005/03/09 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We consider the vortices in a superconductor with two individually conserved condensates in a finite magnetic field. The ground state is a lattice of cocentered vortices in both order parameters. We find two phase transitions: (i) a "vortex sublattice melting" transition where vortices in the field with lowest phase stiffness ("light vortices") lose cocentricity with the vortices with large phase stiffness ("heavy vortices"), entering a liquid state (the structure factor of the light vortices vanishes continuously; this transition is in the 3Dxy universality class); (ii) a first-order melting transition of the lattice of heavy vortices, in a liquid of light vortices.