Disorder-induced trapping and antitrapping of vortices in type-II superconductors

We study the features of the superconductivity nucleation and vortex configurations in superconductors with modulated disorder. Using the Ginzburg-Landau--type theory with spatially varying diffusion coefficient, we uncover and explain the switching between the vortex-defect attraction to the repulsion upon the increase in the external magnetic field. It is shown that for rather weak applied magnetic fields, a superconducting nucleus localized near the region with the suppressed diffusion coefficient possesses a nonzero vorticity whereas the increase in the magnetic field can lead to a transition into the state with zero winding number. We demonstrate the manifestations of this switching phenomenon in superconductors with a large number of defects by performing numerical simulations of the vortex structures in superconductors with periodic spatial profiles of the diffusion coefficient. The obtained results clarify the physics of the vortex arrangement in several classes of the superconducting materials including one-dimensional superlattices and nanopatterned superconductors with regular arrays of the defects characterized by the increased concentration of nonmagnetic impurities. Based on analytical estimates within the framework of the Ginzburg-Landau theory, we show that the predicted switching in the pinning mechanism can manifest itself in the change of the slope of the critical current as a function of the external magnetic field.