arXiv subjects

A. B. Kolton

Publications and source records attributed to A. B. Kolton.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Healing of topological defects while crystallizing nanocrystals

Understanding the role of confinement while crystallizing nanocrystals is very relevant for predicting their structure and physical properties. With this aim we perform Langevin dynamics simulations of nanocrystals of the model system of few hundred vortices nucleated in micron-sized superconductors. We study the crystallization dynamics and the low-temperature structural properties of vortex nanocrystals nucleated in field-cooling conditions when changing vortex density or elasticity of the system and physical size of the samples. The low-temperature snapshots obtained in simulations present a healing effect at the edges that is in quantitative agreement with experimental data in Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8+δ micron-sized samples. We show that the low-temperature radial distribution of topological defects is a stationary profile frozen at a temperature below the melting line tuned by intrinsic properties of the vortex structure and on the confinement effect. These findings on the dynamics and spatial profile of topological defects can be applied to describe the physical properties of confined soft condensed matter nanocrystals in general.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

arXiv2026

Deterministic roughening in the dc-driven precessional regime of domain walls

We numerically study the dynamics of extended domain walls in homogeneous ferromagnets driven by a uniform magnetic field at zero temperature. Using both micromagnetic Landau-Lifshitz-Gilbert simulations and a collective-coordinate description, we show that flat chiral domain walls become linearly unstable above the Walker breakdown field and below a higher threshold, provided their length exceeds a characteristic scale. This instability is captured by a quasi-universal spectral stability diagram, parameterized solely by the Gilbert damping, which predicts the onset of deviations from rigid-wall behavior. Beyond the linear regime, large domain walls with bands of unstable modes develop spatiotemporal chaos, intricate Bloch-line dynamics, and deterministic roughening. At a critical field, the system undergoes a dynamical phase transition from a flat to a rough moving phase with universal features. Our results provide a framework for addressing domain-wall dynamics in the presence of thermal fluctuations and quenched disorder by disentangling their effects from intrinsic deterministic instabilities.

cond-mat.dis-nn↗

arXiv2026

Finite-size and quenching effects on hyperuniform structures formed during cooling

The outstanding physical properties of hyperuniform condensed matter systems holds significant promise for technological applications and studying effects that may disrupt this hidden order is therefore very important. Vortex matter in superconductors is a model system to study this problem since imaging experiments have revealed that correlated disorder in the host media and finite size effects disrupt the hyperuniformity of the in-plane arrangement of vortices. Here we report simulations of layered interacting elastic lines as a model for the vortex lattice in three-dimensional superconductors, following a cooling protocol that closely mimics the experimental conditions. We show that finite-thickness effects limiting the hyperuniformity range arise both in equilibrium and out-of-equilibrium. Our results provide a theoretical framework to draw a realistic road-map on synthesizing hyperuniform materials when cooling structures on finite host media with disorder.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

arXiv2024

Effect of Ir growth pressure on the domain wall dynamics in Ta/Pt/Co/Ir/Ta stacks

The dynamical response of magnetic domain walls to external magnetic fields in ultra-thin multilayer magnetic films is determined not only by the composition and thickness of the layers but also by the growth conditions. Growth conditions can induce significant structural changes inside the layers and at the interfaces between them, affecting in particular the dynamics of domain walls, their mobility, elastic tension, and the pinning forces acting on them. In this work, we focus specifically on the effect of Ir layer growth pressure in Ta/Pt/Co/Ir/Ta ultra-thin multilayers films. Measurements of the DC magnetic properties, domain wall velocity and domain morphology in the creep regime for both constant and alternating field pulses, were performed for a batch of samples where the Ir layer was grown at different pressures. We find that the saturation magnetization, the effective anisotropy constant and the domain wall surface tension grow with increasing pressure and saturate at a threshold pressure, while the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya field and the strength of the disorder remain practically unaltered over the range of pressures considered.

cond-mat.dis-nn↗

arXiv2020

Curvature-driven AC-assisted creep dynamics of magnetic domain walls

The dynamics of micrometer-sized magnetic domains in ultra-thin ferromagnetic films is so dramatically slowed down by quenched disorder that the spontaneous elastic tension collapse becomes unobservable at ambient temperature. By magneto-optical imaging we show that a weak zero-bias AC magnetic field can assist such curvature-driven collapse, making the area of a bubble to reduce at a measurable rate, in spite of the negligible effect that the same curvature has on the average creep motion driven by a comparable DC field. An analytical model explains this phenomenon quantitatively.

cond-mat.dis-nn↗

arXiv2020

Thermally rounded depinning of an elastic interface on a washboard potential

The thermal rounding of the depinning transition of an elastic interface sliding on a washboard potential is studied through analytic arguments and very accurate numerical simulations. We confirm the standard view that well below the depinning threshold the average velocity can be calculated considering thermally activated nucleation of forward moving defects. However, we find that the straightforward extension of this analysis to near or above the depinning threshold does not fully describe the physics of the thermally assisted motion. In particular, we find that exactly at the depinning point the average velocity does not follow a pure power-law of the temperature as naively expected by the analogy with standard phase transitions but presents subtle logarithmic corrections. We explain the physical mechanisms behind these corrections and argue that they are non-peculiar collective effects which may also apply to the case of interfaces sliding on uncorrelated disordered landscapes.

cond-mat.dis-nn↗

arXiv2019

Roughening of the anharmonic Larkin model

We study the roughening of $d$-dimensional directed elastic interfaces subject to quenched random forces. As in the Larkin model, random forces are considered constant in the displacement direction and uncorrelated in the perpendicular direction. The elastic energy density contains an harmonic part, proportional to $(\partial_x u)^2$, and an anharmonic part, proportional to $(\partial_x u)^{2n}$, where $u$ is the displacement field and $n>1$ an integer. By heuristic scaling arguments, we obtain the global roughness exponent $ζ$, the dynamic exponent $z$, and the harmonic to anharmonic crossover length scale, for arbitrary $d$ and $n$, yielding an upper critical dimension $d_c(n)=4n$. We find a precise agreement with numerical calculations in $d=1$. For the $d=1$ case we observe, however, an anomalous "faceted" scaling, with the spectral roughness exponent $ζ_s$ satisfying $ζ_s > ζ> 1$ for any finite $n>1$, hence invalidating the usual single-exponent scaling for two-point correlation functions, and the small gradient approximation of the elastic energy density in the thermodynamic limit. We show that such $d=1$ case is directly related to a family of Brownian functionals parameterized by $n$, ranging from the random-acceleration model for $n=1$, to the Lévy arcsine-law problem for $n = \infty$. Our results may be experimentally relevant for describing the roughening of non-linear elastic interfaces in a Matheron-de Marsilly type of random flow.

cond-mat.dis-nn↗

arXiv2018

Universal dimensional crossover of domain wall dynamics in ferromagnetic films

The magnetic domain wall motion driven by a magnetic field is studied in (Ga,Mn)As and (Ga,Mn)(As,P) films of different thicknesses. In the thermally activated creep regime, a kink in the velocity curves and a jump of the roughness exponent evidence a dimensional crossover in the domain wall dynamics. The measured values of the roughness exponent zeta_{1d} = 0.62 +/- 0.02 and zeta_{2d} = 0.45 +/- 0.04 are compatible with theoretical predictions for the motion of elastic line (d = 1) and surface (d = 2) in two and three dimensional media, respectively.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

arXiv2018

Rough infection fronts in a random medium

We study extended infection fronts advancing over a spatially uniform susceptible population by solving numerically a diffusive Kermack McKendrick SIR model with a dichotomous spatially random transmission rate, in two dimensions. We find a non-trivial dynamic critical behavior in the mean velocity, in the shape, and in the rough geometry of the displacement field of the infective front as the disorder approaches a threshold value for spatial spreading of the infection.

cond-mat.dis-nn↗

arXiv2018

On the critical region of long-range depinning transitions

The depinning transition of elastic interfaces with an elastic interaction kernel decaying as $1/r^{d+σ}$ is characterized by critical exponents which continuously vary with $σ$. These exponents are expected to be unique and universal, except in the fully coupled ($-d<σ\le 0$) limit, where they depend on the "smooth" or "cuspy" nature of the microscopic pinning potential. By accurately comparing the depinning transition for cuspy and smooth potentials in a specially devised depinning model, we explain such peculiar limit in terms of the vanishing of the critical region for smooth potentials, as we decrease $σ$ from the short-range ($σ\geq 2$) to the fully coupled case. Our results have practical implications for the determination of critical depinning exponents and identification of depinning universality classes in concrete experimental depinning systems with non-local elasticity, such as contact lines of liquids and fractures.

cond-mat.dis-nn↗

arXiv2017

Creep and thermal rounding close to the elastic depinning threshold

We study the slow stochastic dynamics near the depinning threshold of an elastic interface in a random medium by solving a particularly suited model of hopping interacting particles that belongs to the quenched-Edwards-Wilkinson depinning universality class. The model allows us to compare the cases of uniformly activated and Arrhenius activated hops. In the former case, the velocity accurately follows a standard scaling law of the force and noise intensity with the analog of the thermal rounding exponent satisfying a modified "hyperscaling" relation. For the Arrhenius activation, we find, both numerically and analytically, that the standard scaling form fails for any value of the thermal rounding exponent. We propose an alternative scaling incorporating logarithmic corrections that appropriately fits the numerical results. We argue that this anomalous scaling is related to the strong correlation between activated hops that, alternated with deterministic depinning-like avalanches, occur below the depinning threshold. We rationalize the spatiotemporal patterns by making an analogy of the present model in the near-threshold creep regime with some well-known models with extremal dynamics, particularly the Bak-Sneppen model.

cond-mat.dis-nn↗

arXiv2017

Excess of topological defects induced by confinement in vortex nanocrystals

We directly image individual vortex positions in nanocrystals in order to unveil the structural property that contributes to the depletion of the entropy-jump entailed at the first-order transition. On reducing the nanocrystal size the density of topological defects increases near the edges over a characteristic length. Within this "healing-length" distance from the sample edge vortex rows tend to bend while towards the center of the sample the positional order of the vortex structure is what is expected for the Bragg-glass phase. This suggests that the healing-length may be a key quantity to model the entropy-jump depletion in the first-order transition of extremely-layered vortex nanocrystals.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

arXiv2016

Vortex matter freezing in Bi$_{2}$Sr$_{2}$CaCu$_{2}$O$_{8}$ samples with a very dense distribution of columnar defects

We show that the dynamical freezing of vortex structures nucleated at diluted densities in Bi$_{2}$Sr$_{2}$CaCu$_{2}$O$_{8}$ samples with a dense distribution of columnar defects, $B \sim 10^{-2} B_Φ$ with $B_Φ=5$\,kG, results in configurations with liquid-like correlations. We propose a freezing model considering a relaxation dynamics dominated by double-kink excitations driven by the local stresses obtained directly from experimental images. With this model we estimate the relaxation barrier and the freezing temperature. We argue that the low-field frozen vortex structures nucleated in a dense distribution of columnar defects thus correspond to an out-of-equilibrium non-entangled liquid with strongly reduced mobility rather than to a snapshot of a metastable state with divergent activation barriers as for instance expected for the Bose-glass phase at equilibrium.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

arXiv2015

Avalanches in Tip-Driven Interfaces in Random Media

We analyse by numerical simulations and scaling arguments the avalanche statistics of 1-dimensional elastic interfaces in random media driven at a single point. Both global and local avalanche sizes are power-law distributed, with universal exponents given by the depinning roughness exponent $ζ$ and the interface dimension $d$, and distinct from their values in the uniformly driven case. A crossover appears between uniformly driven behaviour for small avalanches, and point driven behaviour for large avalanches. The scale of the crossover is controlled by the ratio between the stiffness of the pulling spring and the elasticity of the interface; it is visible both in the global and local avalanche-size distributions, as in the average spatial avalanche shape. Our results are relevant to model experiments involving locally driven elastic manifolds at low temperatures, such as magnetic domain walls or vortex lines in superconductors.

cond-mat.dis-nn↗

arXiv2015

Thermodynamic evidence for the Bose glass transition in twinned YBa$_2$Cu$_3$O$_{7-δ}$ crystals

We used a micromechanical torsional oscillator to measure the magnetic response of a twinned YBa$_2$Cu$_3$O$_{7-δ}$ single crystal disk near the Bose glass transition. We observe an anomaly in the temperature dependence of the magnetization consistent with the appearance of a magnetic shielding perpendicular to the correlated pinning of the twin boundaries. This effect is related to the thermodynamic transition from the vortex liquid phase to a Bose glass state.

cond-mat.dis-nn↗

arXiv2014

Pinning dependent field driven domain wall dynamics and thermal scaling in an ultrathin Pt/Co/Pt magnetic film

Magnetic field-driven domain wall motion in an ultrathin Pt/Co(0.45nm)/Pt ferromagnetic film with perpendicular anisotropy is studied over a wide temperature range. Three different pinning dependent dynamical regimes are clearly identified: the creep, the thermally assisted flux flow and the depinning, as well as their corresponding crossovers. The wall elastic energy and microscopic parameters characterizing the pinning are determined. Both the extracted thermal rounding exponent at the depinning transition, $ψ=$0.15, and the Larkin length crossover exponent, $ϕ=$0.24, fit well with the numerical predictions.

cond-mat.dis-nn↗

arXiv2013

Uniqueness of the thermodynamic limit for driven disordered elastic interfaces

We study the finite size fluctuations at the depinning transition for a one-dimensional elastic interface of size $L$ displacing in a disordered medium of transverse size $M=k L^ζ$ with periodic boundary conditions, where $ζ$ is the depinning roughness exponent and $k$ is a finite aspect ratio parameter. We focus on the crossover from the infinitely narrow ($k\to 0$) to the infinitely wide ($k\to \infty$) medium. We find that at the thermodynamic limit both the value of the critical force and the precise behavior of the velocity-force characteristics are {\it unique} and $k$-independent. We also show that the finite size fluctuations of the critical force (bias and variance) as well as the global width of the interface cross over from a power-law to a logarithm as a function of $k$. Our results are relevant for understanding anisotropic size-effects in force-driven and velocity-driven interfaces.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

arXiv2013

Numerical Approaches on Driven Elastic Interfaces in Random Media

We discuss the universal dynamics of elastic interfaces in quenched random media. We focus in the relation between the rough geometry and collective transport properties in driven steady-states. Specially devised numerical algorithms allow us to analyze the equilibrium, creep, and depinning regimes of motion in minimal models. The relevance of our results for understanding domain wall experiments is outlined.

cond-mat.dis-nn↗