Transition to plastic motion as a critical phenomenon and anomalous interface layer of a 2D driven vortex lattice

The dynamic transition between the ordered flow and the plastic flow is studied for a two-dimensional driven vortex lattice, in the presence of sharp and dense pinning centers, from numerical simulations. For this system, which does not show smectic ordering, the lattice exhibits a first order transition from a crystal to a liquid, shortly followed by the dynamical transition to the plastic flow. The resistivity provides a critical order parameter for the latter, and critical exponents are determined in analogy with a percolation transition. At the boundary between a pinned region and an unpinned one, an anomalous layer is observed, where the vortices are more strongly pinned than in the bulk.