The Elastic Depinning Transition of Vortex Lattices in Two Dimensions

Large-scale numerical simulations are used to study the elastic dynamics of two-dimensional vortex lattices driven on a disordered medium in the case of weak disorder. We investigate the so-called elastic depinning transition by decreasing the driving force from the elastic dynamical regime to the state pinned by the quenched disorder. Similarly to the plastic depinning transition, we find results compatible with a second-order phase transition, although both depinning transitions are very different from many viewpoints. We evaluate three critical exponents of the elastic depinning transition. beta = 0.29+/-0.03 is found for the velocity exponent at zero temperature, and from the velocity-temperature curves we extract the critical exponent delta(-1) = 0.28+/-0.05. Furthermore, in contrast with charge-density waves, a finite-size scaling analysis suggests the existence of a unique diverging length at the depinning threshold with an exponent nu = 1.04+/-0.04, which controls the critical force distribution, the finite-size crossover force distribution and the intrinsic correlation length. Finally, a scaling relation is found between velocity and temperature with the beta and delta critical exponents both independent with regard to pinning strength and disorder realizations.