1996/01/09 by Barbara Drossel, Mehran Kardar · 4 citations
Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Material Dynamics and Properties #Physics of Superconductivity and Magnetism #Theoretical and Computational Physics #cond-mat
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physreve.53.5861
published as Phys. Rev. E 53, 5861 (1996) · 12 pages Revtex and 9 postscript figures
arxiv created 1996/01/09 · openalex publication_date 1996/06/01 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/04
We study analytically and numerically the winding of a flux line around a columnar defect. Reflecting and absorbing boundary conditions apply to marginal or repulsive defects, respectively. In both cases, the winding angle distribution decays exponentially for large angles, with a decay constant depending only on the boundary condition, but not on microscopic features. Nonuniversal distributions are encountered for chiral defects that preferentially twist the flux line in one direction. The resulting asymmetric distributions have decay constants that depend on the degree of chirality. In particular, strong chirality encourages entanglements and leads to broad distributions. We also examine the windings of flux lines in the presence of point impurities (random bonds). Our results suggest that pinning to impurities reduces entanglements, leading to a narrow (Gaussian) distribution. \textcopyright 1996 The American Physical Society.