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Letter

Nature Physics 5, 35–39 (1 January 2009) | doi:10.1038/nphys1127

Mechanics of individual isolated vortices in a cuprate superconductor

Ophir M. Auslaender , Lan Luan , Eric W. J. Straver , Jennifer E. Hoffman , Nicholas C. Koshnick , Eli Zeldov , Douglas A. Bonn , Ruixing Liang , Walter N. Hardy & Kathryn A. Moler

Superconductors often contain quantized microscopic whirlpools of electrons, called vortices, that can be modelled as one-dimensional elastic objects. Vortices are a diverse area of study for condensed matter because of the interplay between thermal fluctuations, vortex–vortex interactions and the interaction of the vortex core with the three-dimensional disorder landscape.