2001/06/30 by G. P. Mikitik, Grigorii P. Mikitik, Ernst Helmut Brandt · 2 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Condensed Matter Physics #Physics of Superconductivity and Magnetism #Theoretical and Computational Physics #cond-mat.mtrl-sci #cond-mat.supr-con
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevb.64.184514
15 pages including 11 figures
arxiv created 2001/07/17 · openalex publication_date 2001/10/19 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We investigate the order-disorder transition line from a Bragg glass to an amorphous vortex glass in the H\ensuremath-T phase diagram of three-dimensional type-II superconductors taking into account both pinning-caused and thermal fluctuations of the vortex lattice. Our approach is based on the Lindemann criterion and on results of the collective pinning theory and generalizes previous work of other authors. It is shown that the shapes of the order-disorder transition line and the vortex-lattice melting curve are determined only by the Ginzburg number, which characterizes thermal fluctuations, and by a parameter which describes the strength of the quenched disorder in the flux-line lattice. In the framework of this unified approach we obtain the H\ensuremath-T phase diagrams for both conventional and high-Tc superconductors. Several well-known experimental results concerning the fishtail effect and the phase diagram of high-Tc superconductors are naturally explained by assuming that a peak effect in the critical current density versus H signalizes the order-disorder transition line in superconductors with point defects.