Inverse melting and re-entrant transformations of the vortex lattice in amorphous Re6Zr thin film

Rishabh Duhan, Subhamita Sengupta, John Jesudasan, Somak Basistha and Pratap Raychaudhuri ()
Additional contact information
Rishabh Duhan: Tata Institute of Fundamental Research
Subhamita Sengupta: Tata Institute of Fundamental Research
John Jesudasan: Tata Institute of Fundamental Research
Somak Basistha: Tata Institute of Fundamental Research
Pratap Raychaudhuri: Tata Institute of Fundamental Research

Nature Communications, 2025, vol. 16, issue 1, 1-8

Abstract: Abstract “Inverse melting” refers to a rare phenomenon where an increase in temperature can induce a transition from a liquid to a solid. The vortex lattice in Type II superconductors is one system where inverse melting has been theoretically predicted. Here, we report the inverse melting of vortices in an amorphous Re6Zr thin film with moderate vortex pinning under the application of a magnetic field. By imaging the vortex state using a scanning tunnelling microscope, we show that at low fields and temperatures, the vortices form a “pinned liquid”, that is characterised by low mobility of the vortices and vortex density that is spatially inhomogeneous. As the temperature or magnetic field is increased, the vortices get ordered, eventually forming a nearly perfect vortex solid before melting again into a liquid. Complementing direct imaging with transport measurements, we show that these transformations leave distinct signatures in the magnetotransport properties of the superconductor.

Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-57431-3 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:16:y:2025:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-025-57431-3

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-025-57431-3

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().