2013/07/24 by M. L. Latimer, Michael Latimer, G. R. Berdiyorov +4 · 95 citations
Materials Science · Mathematics · Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Condensed Matter Physics #Condensed matter physics #Ground state #Ising model #Magnetic and transport properties of perovskites and related materials #Magnetic field #Mathematics #Mechanics #Nonlinear system #Physics #Physics of Superconductivity and Magnetism #Quantum mechanics #Realization (probability) #Square lattice #Superconductivity #Vortex #cond-mat.mes-hall #cond-mat.supr-con
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.111.067001
published in Physical Review Letters 111(6), 067001 (American Physical Society) · To appear in Phys. Rev. Lett
arxiv created 2013/07/24 · openalex publication_date 2013/08/05 · arxiv updated 2015/06/16 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
We report an anomalous matching effect in MoGe thin films containing pairs of circular holes arranged in such a way that four of those pairs meet at each vertex point of a square lattice. A remarkably pronounced fractional matching was observed in the magnetic field dependences of both the resistance and the critical current. At the half matching field the critical current can be even higher than that at zero field. This has never been observed before for vortices in superconductors with pinning arrays. Numerical simulations within the nonlinear Ginzburg-Landau theory reveal a square vortex ice configuration in the ground state at the half matching field and demonstrate similar characteristic features in the field dependence of the critical current, confirming the experimental realization of an artificial ice system for vortices for the first time.