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Vortex Physics In Confined Geometries, M. Cristina Marchetti, David R. Nelson

David R. Nelson

Patterned irradiation of cuprate superconductors with columnar defects allows a new generation of experiments which can probe the properties of vortex liquids by forcing them to flow in confined geometries. Such experiments can be used to distinguish experimentally between continuous disorder-driven glass transitions of vortex matter, such as the vortex glass or the Bose glass transition, and nonequilibrium polymer-like glass transitions driven by interaction and entanglement. For continuous glass transitions, an analysis of such experiments that combines an inhomogeneous scaling theory with the hydrodynamic description of viscous flow of vortex liquids can be used to infer the critical behavior. After …