The current density in a superconductor with turnarounds or constrictions is nonuniform due to a geometrical current-crowding effect. This effect reduces the critical current in the superconducting structure compared to a straight segment and is of importance when designing superconducting devices. We investigate the current-crowding effect in numerical simulations within the generalized time-dependent Ginzburg-Landau (GTDGL) model. The results are validated experimentally by measuring the magnetic field dependence of the critical current in superconducting-nanowire structures, similar to those employed in single-photon detector devices. Comparing the results with London theory, we conclude that the reduction in critical current is significantly smaller in the GTDGL model. This difference is attributed to the current redistribution effect, which reduces the current density at weak points of the superconductor and counteracts the current-crowding effect. We numerically investigate the effect of the fill factor on the critical current in a meander and conclude that the reduction of the critical current is low enough to justify fill factors higher than 33% for applications where the detection efficiency is critical. Finally, we propose a meander design that can combine a high fill factor and low current crowding.

We study numerically the nonequilibrium glass formation and depinning transition of a system of two-dimensional cluster-forming monodisperse particles in the presence of pinning disorder. The pairwise interaction potential is nonmonotonic and is motivated by the intervortex forces in type-1.5 superconductors but also applies to a variety of other systems. Such systems can form cluster glasses due to the intervortex interactions following a thermal quench, without underlying disorder. We study the effects of vortex pinning in these systems. We find that a small density of pinning centers of moderate depth has a limited effect on vortex glass formation, i.e., formation of vortex glasses is dominated by intervortex interactions. At higher densities, pinning can significantly affect glass formation. The cluster glass depinning, under a constant driving force, is found to be plastic, with features distinct from non-cluster-forming systems such as clusters merging and breaking. We find that, in general, vortices with cluster-forming interaction forces can exhibit stronger pinning effects than regular vortices.

We present a large-scale simulation of the three-dimensional Ising spin glass with Gaussian disorder to low temperatures and large sizes using optimized population annealing Monte Carlo. Our primary focus is investigating the number of pure states regarding a controversial statistic, characterizing the fraction of centrally peaked disorder instances, of the overlap function order parameter. We observe that this statistic is subtly and sensitively influenced by the slight fluctuations of the integrated central weight of the disorder-averaged overlap function, making the asymptotic growth behavior very difficult to identify. Modified statistics effectively reducing this correlation are studied, and essentially monotonic growth trends are obtained. The effect of temperature is also studied, finding a larger growth rate at a higher temperature. Our state-of-the-art simulation and variance reduction data analysis suggest that the many pure states picture is most likely and coherent.

Monodisperse ensembles of particles that have cluster crystalline phases at low temperatures can model a number of physical systems, such as vortices in type-1.5 superconductors, colloidal suspensions, and cold atoms. In this work, we study a two-dimensional cluster-forming particle system interacting via an ultrasoft potential. We present a simple mean-field characterization of the cluster-crystal ground state, corroborating with Monte Carlo simulations for a wide range of densities. The efficiency of several Monte Carlo algorithms is compared, and the challenges of thermal equilibrium sampling are identified. We demonstrate that the liquid to cluster-crystal phase transition is of first order and occurs in a single step, and the liquid phase is a cluster liquid. 

We present a new type of phase-change behavior relevant for information storage applications, that can be observed in 2D systems with cluster-forming ability. The temperature-based control of the ordering in 2D particle systems depends on the existence of a crystal-to-glass transition. We perform molecular dynamics simulations of models with soft interactions, demonstrating that the crystalline and amorphous structures can be easily tuned by heat pulses. The physical mechanism responsible for this behavior is a self-assembled polydispersity, that depends on the cluster-forming ability of the interactions. Therefore, the range of real materials that can perform such a transition is very wide in nature, ranging from colloidal suspensions to vortex matter. The state of the art in soft matter experimental setups, controlling interactions, polydispersity and dimensionality, makes it a very fertile ground for practical applications.

We use large-scale Monte Carlo simulations to test the Weinrib-Halperin criterion that predicts new universality classes in the presence of sufficiently slowly decaying power-law correlated quenched disorder. While new universality classes are reasonably well established, the predicted exponents are controversial. We propose a method of growing such correlated disorder using the three-dimensional Ising model as a benchmark system for both generating disorder and studying the resulting phase transition. Critical equilibrium configurations of a disorder-free system are used to define the two-value distributed random bonds with a small power-law exponent given by the pure Ising exponent. Finite-size scaling analysis shows a new universality class with a single phase transition, but the critical exponents nu(d) = 1.13(5), eta(d) = 0.48(3) differ significantly from theoretical predictions. We find that depending on the details of the disorder generation, disorder-averaged quantities can develop peaks at two temperatures for finite sizes. Finally, a layer model with the two values of bonds spatially separated in halves of the system genuinely has multiple phase transitions, and thermodynamic properties can be flexibly tuned by adjusting the model parameters.

Spin glasses have competing interactions and complex energy landscapes that are highly susceptible to perturbations, such as the temperature or the bonds. The thermal boundary condition technique is an effective and visual approach for characterizing chaos and has been successfully applied to three dimensions. In this paper, we tailor the technique to partial thermal boundary conditions, where the thermal boundary condition is applied in a subset (three out of four in this work) of the dimensions for better flexibility and efficiency for a broad range of disordered systems. We use this method to study both temperature chaos and bond chaos of the four-dimensional Edwards-Anderson model with Gaussian disorder to low temperatures. We compare the two forms of chaos, with chaos of three dimensions, and also the four-dimensional +/- J model. We observe that the two forms of chaos are characterized by the same set of scaling exponents, bond chaos is much stronger than temperature chaos, and the exponents are also compatible with the +/- J model. Finally, we discuss the effects of chaos on the number of pure states in the thermal boundary condition ensemble.

A new approach to the Berezinskii–Kosterlitz–Thouless transition in the two-dimensional Coulomb gas model is explored by Monte Carlo simulation and finite size scaling. The usual mapping of a neutral two-dimensional superconductor in zero magnetic field to a Coulomb gas leads to an unscreened logarithmic interaction between the vortices, and with periodic boundary conditions vortex configurations are always vorticity neutral with an equal number of plus and minus vortices. We demonstrate that relaxing the neutrality condition has certain advantages. It leads to non-neutral vortex configurations that can appear in real systems with open boundary conditions and permits calculation of the compressibility, which for thin film superconductors corresponds to the magnetic permeability. The vortex-number fluctuation has remarkable scaling properties at and below the Berezinskii–Kosterlitz–Thouless transition. The fugacity variable becomes dangerously irrelevant in the low-temperature phase and leads to a multiplicative scaling correction to the mean-square vortex-number fluctuation and to the magnetic permeability. This multiplicative correction strongly affects the scaling properties of the vorticity fluctuation at and below the transition. Consequences of these findings are demonstrated using Monte Carlo simulations. Inclusion of the next-higher order correction to scaling is found to play an important role in the analysis of numerical data for the vortex number fluctuation and permits accurate determination of the critical properties.

Background: The type IV pili (Tfp) of pathogenic Neisseria (i. e., N. gonorrhoeae and N. meningitidis) are essential for twitching motility. Tfp retraction, which is dependent on the ATPase PilT, generates the forces that move bacteria over surfaces. Neisseria motility has mainly been studied in N. gonorrhoeae whereas the motility of N. meningitidis has not yet been characterized. Results: In this work, we analyzed bacterial motility and monitored Tfp retraction using live- cell imaging of freely moving bacteria. We observed that N. meningitidis moved over surfaces at an approximate speed of 1.6 mu m/s, whereas N. gonorrhoeae moved with a lower speed (1.0 mu/s). An alignment of the meningococcal and gonococcal pilT promoters revealed a conserved single base pair variation in the -10 promoter element that influence PilT expression. By tracking mutants with altered pilT expression or pilE sequence, we concluded that the difference in motility speed was independent of both. Live-cell imaging using total internal reflection fluorescence microscopy demonstrated that N. gonorrhoeae more often moved with fewer visible retracting filaments when compared to N. meningitidis. Correspondingly, meningococci also displayed a higher level of piliation in transmission electron microscopy. Nevertheless, motile gonococci that had the same number of filaments as N. meningitidis still moved with a lower speed. Conclusions: These data reveal differences in both speed and piliation between the pathogenic Neisseria species during twitching motility, suggesting a difference in Tfp-dynamics.

In a single-component Ginzburg-Landau model that possesses thermodynamically stable vortex excitations, the zero-field superconducting phase transition is second order even when fluctuations are included. Beyond the mean-field approximation the transition is described in terms of proliferation of vortex loops. Here we determine the order of the superconducting transition in an effective 3D vortex-loop model for the recently proposed multi-band type-1.5 superconductors where the vortex interaction is non-monotonic, i.e., intermediate-range attractive and short-range repulsive. We find that the details of the vortex interaction, despite its short-range nature, can play an important role for the properties of the transition. In the type-1.5 regime with non-monotonic intervortex interaction, in contrast to the single-band case we find a first-order vortex-driven phase transition.