Abstract
Inverse melting is the process in which a crystal reversibly transforms into a liquid or amorphous phase when its temperature is decreased. Such a process is considered to be very rare1, and the search for it is often hampered by the formation of non-equilibrium states or intermediate phases2. Here we report the discovery of first-order inverse melting of the lattice formed by magnetic flux lines in a high-temperature superconductor. At low temperatures, disorder in the material pins the vortices, preventing the observation of their equilibrium properties and therefore the determination of whether a phase transition occurs. But by using a technique3 to ‘dither’ the vortices, we were able to equilibrate the lattice, which enabled us to obtain direct thermodynamic evidence of inverse melting of the ordered lattice into a disordered vortex phase as the temperature is decreased. The ordered lattice has larger entropy than the low-temperature disordered phase. The mechanism of the first-order phase transition changes gradually from thermally induced melting at high temperatures to a disorder-induced transition at low temperatures.
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Acknowledgements
We thank V. B. Geshkenbein for valuable discussions. This work was supported by the Israel Science Foundation – Center of Excellence Program, by the Minerva Foundation, Germany, by the Mitchell Research Fund, and by a Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research from the Ministry of Education, Science, Sports and Culture, Japan. D.E.F. acknowledges support from a Koshland Fellowship and an RFBR grant. P.K. and M.L. acknowledge support from the Dutch Foundation FOM. E.Z. acknowledges support from the Fundacion Antorchas – WIS program and from the Ministry of Science, Israel.
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Avraham, N., Khaykovich, B., Myasoedov, Y. et al. 'Inverse' melting of a vortex lattice. Nature 411, 451–454 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1038/35078021
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/35078021
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