Temporal chaotic behaviour of vortex motion in a type-II superconductors with periodically-distributed pinning centres

Temporal chaotic character of vortex motion in systems where defects are arranged in periodic arrays has been investigated by computer simulation. Due to the high nonlinearity of the vortex–defect interaction, the temporal evolution of the vortex motion is chaotic with a power spectrum similar to what have been observed in the experiments. It is found that the strength of both the vortex–vortex and vortex–defect interactions have no significant effects on the chaotic motion of the vortices, however, the mismatch between these two interactions causes attractor crisis of the system. Different from them, the Lorentz force is not the origin of the attractor crisis, but it causes a divergent motion of the vortex (i.e., the flux flow).