Condensed Matter Physics Seminar
Thursday, December 16, 1999, 2 p.m.
Plant Sciences Building, Room 1130
Glassy vortex matter: What is "glassy" about them?
Sabyasachi (Sobo) Bhattacharya
(Nippon Electric Company Research Institute, Princeton and Tata Institute
of Fundamental Research, Bombay)
Abstract: The nature of the vortex phase of a type-II superconductor
is determined by the competition among elasticity (i.e. intervortex interaction,
favoring a crystal), thermal fluctuations (favoring a liquid) and quenched
random disorder (favoring a disordered assembly, often termed a glass).
We have studied the vortex phases of conventional type-II superconductors,
using a variety of experimental techniques such as magnetic response, transport,
neutron diffraction, muon spin rotation, scanning microscopy etc.
Experimental results yield new insight into the "glassy" phases by providing
empirical analogies with other "glassy" condensed matter systems such as
spin-glasses and supercooled liquids and present evidence of phenomena
usually left out of theoretical considerations of vortex matter.
Host: Sankar Das Sarma
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