Colloquium

Vortex Matter: Solid, Liquid and Glass

Dr. George Crabtree   
Materials Science Division
Argonne National Laboratory
Wednesday, December 1, 2004
Higgins 310, 4 pm

Vortices in superconductors interact with each other via Lorentz forces favoring the formation of an ordered Abrikosov lattice, with quenched spatial disorder via pinning forces favoring the formation of glassy states, and with temporal disorder via thermal fluctuations favoring formation of liquid states. Variation of temperature, magnetic field, and pinning defect density allows sampling all three regions of the vortex phase diagram. Thermodynamic experiments establishing the first and second order of vortex melting will be presented, along with vortex transport experiments in a Corbino geometry that probe the dynamic response of vortex matter at the solid-liquid phase boundary.