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APS » Journals » Phys. Rev. Lett. » Volume 74 » Issue 7
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Phys. Rev. Lett. 74, 1206–1209 (1995)

Superconducting Vortex Avalanches

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Stuart Field, Jeff Witt, and Franco Nori
Department of Physics, The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109

Xinsheng Ling*
Department of Applied Physics, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut 06520

Received 18 May 1994; published in the issue dated 13 February 1995

We monitor the dynamics of superconducting vortices in the Bean state, as the system is driven to the threshold of instability by the slow ramping of an external field. Individual avalanches, containing as few as 50 vortices, are detected in real time. Thus our experiment is the superconducting analog of monitoring the granular avalanches produced by slowly dropping sand on a sandpile. The observed distribution of vortex avalanche sizes shows a power-law behavior over two decades, proving that the vortex dynamics in the Bean state is characterized by avalanches of many length scales.

© 1995 The American Physical Society

URL:
http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevLett.74.1206
DOI:
10.1103/PhysRevLett.74.1206
PACS:
74.60.Ge, 05.40.+j, 64.60.Ht

*Present address: NEC Research Institute, 4 Independence Way, Princeton, NJ 08540.

 
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