Tuesday 8 April 2025
Glassy phases of superconducting vortex lattices in two dimensions
Ilaria Maccari (ETH Zurich)

In this talk, I will briefly review the physics of two-dimensional vortex lattices in thin superconducting films. By exploring the interplay between magnetic field, thermal fluctuations and disorder, I will provide a short overview of the different glassy phases which may appear in their phase diagrams [1-3].  In the second part, I will focus on the two-step melting transition which some two-dimensional vortex lattices exhibit. In this scenario, an intermediate phase known as “hexatic” liquid phase emerges [4]. I will discuss its connections with the properties of fragile glasses and present our recent results on the appearance of a fragile-to-strong glass transition in an amorphous superconducting film [5, 6]. I will conclude by highlighting the main open questions and outlining possible future research directions.

References

1. T. Giamarchi and P. Le Doussal, Phys. Rev. Lett. 72 (10), 1530 (1994), Phys. Rev. B 52 (2) 1242 (1995), Phys. Rev. B 55 (10), 6577 (1997), Physica C: Superconductivity 331 (3), 233 (2000).
2. G. Blatter, M. V. Feigel’man, V. B. Geshkenbein, A. I. Larkin, and V. M. Vinokur, Rev. Mod. Phys. 66, 1125 (1994).
3. D. S. Fisher, M. P. A. Fisher, and D. A. Huse, Phys. Rev. B 43, 130 (1991).
4. I. Roy, S. Dutta, A. N. R. Choudhury, S. Basistha, I. Maccari, S. Mandal, J. Jesudasan, V. Bagwe, C. Castellani, L. Benfatto, P. Raychaudhuri, Phys. Rev. Lett.  122 (4), 047001 (2019).
5. I. Maccari, B. K. Pokharel, J. Terzic, Surajit Dutta, J. Jesudasan, Pratap Raychaudhuri, J. Lorenzana, C. De Michele, C. Castellani, L. Benfatto and Dragana Popović, Phys. Rev. B 107 (1), 014509 (2023).
6. I. Maccari, L. Benfatto, C. Castellani, J. Lorenzana, and C. De Michele, Phys. Rev. Research 7 (1). 013160 (2025).