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Condensed-matter physics

Vortices weave a tangled web

Nature volume 430, pages 839–840 (2004)Cite this article

In high-temperature superconductors, quantized vortex filaments can be twisted up into a DNA-like double helix. An experiment is proposed to test how easily these vortex lines cut through each other.

Inside a superconductor, electrical currents flow without resistance. Almost as remarkable as this electron flow without dissipation are the quantized, thread-like vortices of charge that swirl like miniature tornadoes around lines of magnetic field. Last year, Alexei Abrikosov shared the Nobel Prize in Physics for his brilliant 1957 prediction (made well before similar developments in high-energy theory and astrophysics) that, in a class of materials called ‘type II’ superconductors, a regular lattice of parallel vortex filaments, aligned with an external magnetic field, would form1. In high-temperature copper-oxide superconductors, discovered 30 years later, Abrikosov's vortex lattice actually ‘melts’ over an appreciable range of magnetic field and temperature2,3. Olson Reichhardt and Hastings4, writing in Physical Review Letters, now propose a key experiment that could unravel the physics of these vortices as they become entangled in the melted state.

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Figure 1: Equilibrium phase diagram for a high-temperature superconductor.

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  1. Department of Physics, and in the Division of Engineering and Applied Science, Harvard University, Cambridge, 02138, Massachusetts, USA

    David R. Nelson

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Nelson, D. Vortices weave a tangled web. Nature 430, 839–840 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1038/430839a

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