Inertial mass of a superconducting vortex

Original · EN

We show that a large contribution to the inertial mass of a moving superconducting vortex comes from transversal displacements of the crystal lattice. The corresponding part of the mass per unit length of the vortex line is Mₗ = (mₑ²c²/64πα²μλₗ⁴)(λₗ/ξ), where mₑ is the the bare electron mass, c is the speed of light, α=e²/ℏc ≈ 1/137 is the fine structure constant, μ is the shear modulus of the solid, λₗ is the London penetration length and ξ is the coherence length. In conventional superconductors, this mass can be comparable to or even greater than the vortex core mass computed by Suhl.