Dynamic Phases and the Peak Effect in Dirty Type II Superconductors

Abstract

We study numerically and experimentally the dynamics of driven vortex matter. Our London-Langevin simulations find that the critical current exhibits a peak both across the Bragg glass to vortex glass transition and across the melting line. The peak is accompanied by a clear crossing of the I-V curves. We report transport measurements on untwinned YBCO crystals, in complete accordance with these findings. At higher drives disorder is averaged to reduced values, and in three dimensions the vortices reorder into a "moving solid." The effect of the disorder can be well represented with a "shaking temperature" which is inversely proportional to the velocity.