Mode locking in driven vortex lattices with transverse ac drive and random pinning

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

PHYSICAL REVIEW LETTERS

The American Physical Society

Lugar: USA; Año: 2002 vol. 65 p. 184508 - 184513

0031-9007

We find mode-locking steps in simulated current-voltage characteristics of driven vortex lattices with random pinning when an applied ac current is perpendicular to the dc current. For low frequencies there is mode locking only above a nonzero threshold ac force amplitude, while for large frequencies there is mode locking for any small ac force. This is consistent with the nature of transverse temporal order in the different regimes in the absence of an applied ac drive. For large frequencies the magnitude of the fundamental mode-locked step depends linearly on the ac force amplitude.