Vortex Dynamics and the Hall Anomaly: A Microscopic Analysis

Abstract

We present a microscopic derivation of the equation of motion for a vortex in a superconductor. A coherent view on vortex dynamics is obtained, in which both hydrodynamics and the vortex core contribute to the forces acting on a vortex. The competition between these two provides an interpretation of the observed sign change in the Hall angle in superconductors with mean free path $l$ of the order of the coherence length $\ensuremath{\xi}$ in terms of broken particle-hole symmetry, which is related to details of the microscopic mechanism of superconductivity.