Chaotic dynamics of superconductor vortices in the plastic phase

We present numerical simulation results of driven vortex lattices in the presence of random disorder at zero temperature. We show that the plastic dynamics is readily understood in the framework of chaos theory. Intermittency "routes to chaos" have been clearly identified, and positive Lyapunov exponents and broadband noise, both characteristic of chaos, are found to coincide with the differential resistance peak. Furthermore, the fractal dimension of the strange attractor reveals that the chaotic dynamics of vortices is low dimensional.