arXiv subjects

Mats Wallin

Publications and source records attributed to Mats Wallin.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2022

Current crowding in nanoscale superconductors within the Ginzburg-Landau model

The current density in a superconductor with turnarounds or constrictions is non-uniform due to a geometrical current crowding effect. This effect reduces the critical current in the superconducting structure compared to a straight segment and is of importance when designing superconducting devices. We investigate the current crowding effect in numerical simulations within the generalized time-dependent Ginzburg-Landau (GTDGL) model. The results are validated experimentally by measuring the magnetic field dependence of the critical current in superconducting nanowire structures, similar to those employed in single-photon detector devices. Comparing the results with London theory, we conclude that the reduction in critical current is significantly smaller in the GTDGL model. This difference is attributed to the current redistribution effect, which reduces the current density in weak points of the superconductor and counteracts the current crowding effect. We numerically investigate the effect of fill factor on the critical current in a meander and conclude that the reduction of critical current is low enough to justify fill factors higher than $33\,\%$ for applications where detection efficiency is critical. Finally, we propose a novel meander design which can combine high fill factor and low current crowding.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

arXiv2021

Evidence of many thermodynamic states of the three-dimensional Ising spin glass

We present a large-scale simulation of the three-dimensional Ising spin glass with Gaussian disorder to low temperatures and large sizes using optimized population annealing Monte Carlo. Our primary focus is investigating the number of pure states regarding a controversial statistic, characterizing the fraction of centrally peaked disorder instances, of the overlap function order parameter. We observe that this statistic is subtly and sensitively influenced by the slight fluctuations of the integrated central weight of the disorder-averaged overlap function, making the asymptotic growth behaviour very difficult to identify. Modified statistics effectively reducing this correlation are studied and essentially monotonic growth trends are obtained. The effect of temperature is also studied, finding a larger growth rate at a higher temperature. Our state-of-the-art simulation and variance reduction data analysis suggest that the many pure state picture is most likely and coherent.

cond-mat.dis-nn↗

arXiv2020

Pinning effects in a two-dimensional cluster glass

We study numerically the glass formation and depinning transition of a system of two-dimensional cluster-forming monodisperse particles in presence of pinning disorder. The pairwise interaction potential is nonmonotonic, and is motivated by the intervortex forces in type-$1.5$ superconductors. Such systems can form cluster glasses due to the intervortex interactions following a thermal quench, without underlying disorder. We study the effects of vortex pinning in these systems. We find that a small density of pinning centers of moderate depth has limited effect on vortex glass formation, i.e., formation of vortex glasses is dominated by intervortex interactions. At higher densities pinning can significantly affect glass formation. The cluster glass depinning, under a constant driving force, is found to be plastic, with features distinct from non-cluster-forming systems such as clusters merging and breaking. We find that in general vortices with cluster-forming interaction forces can exhibit stronger pinning effects than regular vortices.

cond-mat.soft↗

arXiv2019

Three-dimensional universality class of Ising model with power-law-correlated critical disorder

We use large-scale Monte Carlo simulations to test the Weinrib-Halperin criterion that predicts new universality classes in the presence of sufficiently slowly decaying power-law-correlated quenched disorder. While new universality classes are reasonably well established, the predicted exponents are controversial. We propose a method of growing such correlated disorder using the three-dimensional Ising model as benchmark systems both for generating disorder and studying the resulting phase transition. Critical equilibrium configurations of a disorder-free system are used to define the two-value distributed random bonds with a small power-law exponent given by the pure Ising exponent. Finite-size scaling analysis shows a new universality class with a single phase transition, but the critical exponents $ν_d=1.13(5), η_d=0.48(3)$ differ significantly from theoretical predictions. We find that depending on details of the disorder generation, disorder-averaged quantities can develop peaks at two temperatures for finite sizes. Finally, a layer model with the two values of bonds spatially separated to halves of the system genuinely has multiple phase transitions and thermodynamic properties can be flexibly tuned by adjusting the model parameters.

cond-mat.dis-nn↗

arXiv2019

Phase-change switching in 2D via soft interactions

We present a new type of phase-change behavior relevant for information storage applications, that can be observed in 2D systems with cluster-forming ability. The temperature-based control of the ordering in 2D particle systems depends on the existence of a crystal-to-glass transition. We perform molecular dynamics simulations of models with soft interactions, demonstrating that the crystalline and amorphous structures can be easily tuned by heat pulses. The physical mechanism responsible for this behavior is a self-assembled polydispersity, that depends on the cluster-forming ability of the interactions. Therefore, the range of real materials that can perform such a transition is very wide in nature, reading from colloidal suspensions to vortex matter. The state of the art in soft matter experimental setups, controlling interactions, polydispersity and dimensionality, makes it a very fertile ground for practical applications.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

arXiv2019

Melting of a two-dimensional monodisperse cluster crystal to a cluster liquid

Monodisperse ensembles of particles that have cluster crystalline phases at low temperatures can model a number of physical systems, such as vortices in type-1.5 superconductors, colloidal suspensions and cold atoms. In this work we study a two-dimensional cluster-forming particle system interacting via an ultrasoft potential. We present a simple mean-field characterization of the cluster-crystal ground state, corroborating with Monte Carlo simulations for a wide range of densities. The efficiency of several Monte Carlo algorithms are compared and the challenges of thermal equilibrium sampling are identified. We demonstrate that the liquid to cluster-crystal phase transition is of first order and occurs in a single step, and the liquid phase is a cluster liquid.

cond-mat.soft↗

arXiv2018

Chaotic temperature and bond dependence of four-dimensional Gaussian spin glasses with partial thermal boundary conditions

Spin glasses have competing interactions and complex energy landscapes that are highly-susceptible to perturbations, such as the temperature or the bonds. The thermal boundary condition technique is an effective and visual approach for characterizing chaos, and has been successfully applied to three dimensions. In this paper, we tailor the technique to partial thermal boundary conditions, where thermal boundary condition is applied in a subset (3 out of 4 in this work) of the dimensions for better flexibility and efficiency for a broad range of disordered systems. We use this method to study both temperature chaos and bond chaos of the four-dimensional Edwards-Anderson model with Gaussian disorder to low temperatures. We compare the two forms of chaos, with chaos of three dimensions, and also the four-dimensional $\pm J$ model. We observe that the two forms of chaos are characterized by the same set of scaling exponents, bond chaos is much stronger than temperature chaos, and the exponents are also compatible with the $\pm J$ model. Finally, we discuss the effects of chaos on the number of pure states in the thermal boundary condition ensemble.

cond-mat.dis-nn↗

arXiv2018

Scaling of the magnetic permeability at the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless transition from Coulomb gas simulations

A new approach to the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless transition in the two-dimensional Coulomb gas model is explored by MC simulation and finite size scaling. The usual mapping of a neutral two-dimensional superconductor in zero magnetic field to a Coulomb gas leads to an unscreened logarithmic interaction between the vortices, and with periodic boundary conditions vortex configurations are always vorticity neutral with an equal number of plus and minus vortices. We demonstrate that relaxing the neutrality condition has certain advantages. It leads to non-neutral vortex configurations that can appear in real systems with open boundary conditions and permits calculation of the compressibility, which for thin film superconductors corresponds to the magnetic permeability. The vortex-number fluctuation has remarkable scaling properties at and below the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless transition. The fugacity variable becomes dangerously irrelevant in the low-temperature phase and leads to a multiplicative scaling correction to the mean-square vortex-number fluctuation and to the magnetic permeability. This multiplicative correction strongly affects the scaling properties of the vorticity fluctuation at and below the transition. Consequences of these findings are demonstrated using Monte Carlo simulations. Inclusion of the next-higher order correction to scaling is found to play an important role in the analysis of numerical data for the vortex number fluctuation and permits accurate determination of the critical properties.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

arXiv2015

Fluctuation-induced first order phase transitions in type-1.5 superconductors in zero external field

In a single-component Ginzburg-Landau model which possesses thermodynamically stable vortex excitations, the zero-field superconducting phase transition is second order even when fluctuations are included. Beyond the mean-field approximation the transition is described in terms of proliferation of vortex loops. Here we determine the order of the superconducting transition in an effective 3D vortex-loop model for the recently proposed multiband type-1.5 superconductors. The vortex interaction is nonmonotonic, i.e., exponentially screened and attractive at large separations, and short-range repulsive. We show that the details of the vortex interaction, despite its short-range nature, can lead to very different properties of the superconducting transition than found in type-1 and type-2 systems. Namely, the type-1.5 regime with nonmonotonic intervortex interaction can have a first-order vortex-driven phase transition not found in the single-band case.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

arXiv2013

Angular momentum blockade in nanoscale high-T_c superconducting grains

We discuss the angular momentum blockade in small d-wave superconducting grains in an external field. We find that abrupt changes in angular momentum state of the condensate, angular momentum blockade, occur as a result of changes in the angular momentum of the condensate in an external magnetic field. The effect rep- resents a direct analogy with the Coulomb blockade. We use the Ginzburg-Landau formalism to illustrate how a magnetic field induces a deviation from the d-wave symmetry which is described by a (d + id')-order parameter. We derive the behavior of the volume magnetic susceptibility as a function of the magnetic field, and corresponding magnetization jumps at critical values of the field that should be experimentally observable in superconducting grains.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

arXiv2012

Superfluid transition in a correlated defect network

Motivated by recent experiments on possible supersolid behavior of $^4$He solids at low temperature, we consider a model of superfluidity in a defected solid containing a system spaning network of correlated linear dislocations, or planar grain boundaries. Using arguments based on the Harris criterion, as well as numerical simulations, we find that such correlated quenched disorder shifts the familiar superfluid lambda transition to a new disordered universality class in which the correlation length exponent $ν\ge 1$. This results in the temperature-derivates for the superfluid density, $dρ_{\rm s}/dT$, and for the heat capacity, $dc/dT$, remaining finite at the transition $T_{\rm c}$, and thus a less singular transition, profoundly different from the usual lambda transition.

cond-mat.dis-nn↗

arXiv2011

Quantum Critical Dynamics Simulation of Dirty Boson Systems

Recently the scaling result $z=d$ for the dynamic critical exponent at the Bose glass to superfluid quantum phase transition has been questioned both on theoretical and numerical grounds. This motivates a careful evaluation of the critical exponents in order to determine the actual value of $z$. We study a model of quantum bosons at T=0 with disorder in 2D using highly effective worm Monte Carlo simulations. Our data analysis is based on a finite size scaling approach to determine the scaling of the quantum correlation time from simulation data for boson world lines. The resulting critical exponents are $z=1.8 \pm 0.05, ν=1.15 \pm 0.03,$ and $η=-0.3 \pm 0.1$, hence suggesting that $z=2$ is not satisfied.

cond-mat.dis-nn↗

arXiv2007

Dwell time symmetry in random walks and molecular motors

The statistics of steps and dwell times in reversible molecular motors differ from those of cycle completion in enzyme kinetics. The reason is that a step is only one of several transitions in the mechanochemical cycle. As a result, theoretical results for cycle completion in enzyme kinetics do not apply to stepping data. To allow correct parameter estimation, and to guide data analysis and experiment design, a theoretical treatment is needed that takes this observation into account. In this paper, we model the distribution of dwell times and number of forward and backward steps using first passage processes, based on the assumption that forward and backward steps correspond to different directions of the same transition. We extend recent results for systems with a single cycle and consider the full dwell time distributions as well as models with multiple pathways, detectable substeps, and detachments. Our main results are a symmetry relation for the dwell time distributions in reversible motors, and a relation between certain relative step frequencies and the free energy per cycle. We demonstrate our results by analyzing recent stepping data for a bacterial flagellar motor, and discuss the implications for the efficiency and reversibility of the force-generating subunits. Key words: motor proteins; single molecule kinetics; enzyme kinetics; flagellar motor; Markov process; non-equilibrium fluctuations.

q-bio.BM↗

arXiv2007

Thermodynamics of a Heavy Ion-Irradiated Superconductor: the Zero-Field Transition

Specific heat measurements show that the introduction of amorphous columnar defects considerably affects the transition from the normal to the superconducting state in zero magnetic field. Experimental results are compared to numerical simulations of the 3D XY model for both the pure system and the system containing random columnar disorder. The numerics reproduce the salient features of experiment, showing in particular that the specific heat peak changes from cusp-like to smoothly rounded when columnar defects are added. By considering the specific heat critical exponent alpha, we argue that such behavior is consistent with recent numerical work [Vestergren et al., PRB 70, 054508 (2004)] showing that the introduction of columnar defects changes the universality class of the transition.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

arXiv2006

Critical Scaling Properties at the Superfluid Transition of $^4$He in Aerogel

We study the superfluid transition of $^4$He in aerogel by Monte Carlo simulations and finite size scaling analysis. Aerogel is a highly porous silica glass, which we model by a diffusion limited cluster aggregation model. The superfluid is modeled by a three dimensional XY model, with excluded bonds to sites on the aerogel cluster. We obtain the correlation length exponent $ν=0.73 \pm 0.02$, in reasonable agreement with experiments and with previous simulations. For the heat capacity exponent $α$, both experiments and previous simulations suggest deviations from the Josephson hyperscaling relation $α=2-dν$. In contrast, our Monte Carlo results support hyperscaling with $α= -0.2\pm 0.05$. We suggest a reinterpretation of previous experiments, which avoids scaling violations and is consistent with our simulation results.

cond-mat.dis-nn↗

arXiv2006

Force generation in small ensembles of Brownian motors

The motility of certain gram-negative bacteria is mediated by retraction of type IV pili surface filaments, which are essential for infectivity. The retraction is powered by a strong molecular motor protein, PilT, producing very high forces that can exceed 150 pN. The molecular details of the motor mechanism are still largely unknown, while other features have been identified, such as the ring-shaped protein structure of the PilT motor. The surprisingly high forces generated by the PilT system motivate a model investigation of the generation of large forces in molecular motors. We propose a simple model, involving a small ensemble of motor subunits interacting through the deformations on a circular backbone with finite stiffness. The model describes the motor subunits in terms of diffusing particles in an asymmetric, time-dependent binding potential (flashing ratchet potential), roughly corresponding to the ATP hydrolysis cycle. We compute force-velocity relations in a subset of the parameter space and explore how the maximum force (stall force) is determined by stiffness, binding strength, ensemble size, and degree of asymmetry. We identify two qualitatively different regimes of operation depending on the relation between ensemble size and asymmetry. In the transition between these two regimes, the stall force depends nonlinearly on the number of motor subunits. Compared to its constituents without interactions, we find higher efficiency and qualitatively different force-velocity relations. The model captures several of the qualitative features obtained in experiments on pilus retraction forces, such as roughly constant velocity at low applied forces and insensitivity in the stall force to changes in the ATP concentration.

q-bio.SC↗

arXiv2005

Fluctuations in type IV pilus retraction

The type IV pilus retraction motor is found in many important bacterial pathogens. It is the strongest known linear motor protein and is required for bacterial infectivity. We characterize the dynamics of type IV pilus retraction in terms of a stochastic chemical reaction model. We find that a two state model can describe the experimental force velocity relation and qualitative dependence of ATP concentration. The results indicate that the dynamics is limited by an ATP-dependent step at low load and a force-dependent step at high load, and that at least one step is effectively irreversible in the measured range of forces. The irreversible nature of the sub-step(s) lead to interesting predictions for future experiments: We find different parameterizations with mathematically identical force velocity relations but different fluctuations (diffusion constant). We also find a longer elementary step compared to an earlier analysis, which agrees better with known facts about the structure of the pilus filament and energetic considerations. We conclude that more experimental data is needed, and that further retraction experiments are likely to resolve interesting details and give valuable insights into the PilT machinery. In light of our findings, the fluctuations of the retraction dynamics emerge as a key property to be studied in future experiments.

physics.bio-ph↗

arXiv2004

Ratchet effect for cold atoms in an optical lattice

The realization of a directed current for a quantum particle in a flashing asymmetric potential is studied. It is found that a positive current, i.e. in the direction expected for a conventional diffusive ratchet, can be attained at short times in the limit where the potential is weak and quantum diffusion dominates, while current reversal is obtained for stronger potentials. A single parameter, the ratio between the kicking frequency and the optical lattice potential strength, determines both the degree to which quantum effects dominate, and the possibility of obtaining a ratchet current. The effect should be readily observable in experiments.

cond-mat.other↗