Vortices in high performance high temperature superconductors.
The behavior of vortex matter in high temperature superconductors (HTS) controls the entire electromagnetic response of the material, including its current carrying capacity. Here, we review the basic concepts of vortex pinning and its application to a complex mixed pinning landscape to enhance the critical current and to reduce its anisotropy. We focus on recent scientific advances that have resulted in large enhancements of the in field critical current in state of the art second generation (2G) YBCO coated conductors and on the prospect of an isotropic, high critical current superconductor in the iron based superconductors. Lastly, we discuss an emerging new paradigm of critical current by design a drive to achieve a quantitative correlation between the observed critical current density and mesoscale mixed pinning landscapes by using realistic input parameters in an innovative and powerful large scale time dependent Ginzburg Landau approach to simulating vortex dynamics.
Reports on progress in physics. Physical Society