Mode Locking in ac-Driven Vortex Lattices with Random Pinning

ALEJANDRO B. KOLTON, DANIEL DOMÍNGUEZ, AND NIELS GRØNBECH-JENSEN

PHYSICAL REVIEW LETTERS

The American Physical Society

Lugar: USA; Año: 2001 vol. 86 p. 4112 - 4115

0031-9007

We find mode-locking steps in simulated current-voltage characteristics of ac-driven vortex lattices with random pinning. For low frequencies there is mode locking above a finite ac force amplitude, while for large frequencies there is mode locking for any small ac force. This is correlated with the nature of temporal order in the different regimes in the absence of ac drive. The mode-locked state is a frozen solid pinned in the moving reference of frame, and the depinning from the step shows plastic flow and hysteresis.