Physica C 341-348, pp. 1145-1146 (2000) [PDF] [Proc. of M2S-HTSC-VI] [Also TeX & Eps files]

Submitted to Phys. Rev. B,   cond-mat/0003396   [PDF, TeX&Eps files, check PRB status]

Presented at M2S-HTSC-VI - 6th Int. Conf. on Materials and Mechanisms of Superconductivityand HTS (Feb. 20-25, 2000, Houston, Texas)

VIDEOs of flux creep simlations for a strip with transport current   (animated GIF files, about 20 Kb each)

Main flux creep simlations page

Abstract.  Two commonly accepted approaches for simulations of thermally-activated vortex motion in superconductors are compared. These are (i) the so-called flux creep approach based on the expression E=vB relating the electric field E to the velocity v of the thermally-activated flux motion and the local flux density B, and (ii) the approach employing a phenomenological nonlinear current-voltage curve, E(j). Our results show that the two approaches give similar but also distinctly different behaviors for the distributions of current and flux density in both a long slab and thin strip geometry. The differences are most pronounced where the local B is small. Magneto-optical imaging of a YBaCuO thin film carrying a transport current was performed to compare the simulations with experimental behavior. It is shown that the flux creep approach describes the experiments far better than simulations based on the E(j) approach.