Stable ‘antiferromagnetic’ vortex lattice imprinted into a type-II superconductor

Abstract

In type-II superconductors, where vortices and antivortices tend to annihilate, only a ‘ferromagnetic’ vortex lattice, with the same orientation of vortex magnetic moments, is usually formed in a homogeneous external magnetic field. Using the time-dependent Ginzburg–Landau formalism, we demonstrate that a checkerboard vortex–antivortex lattice (‘antiferromagnetic vortex lattice’), imprinted onto a superconducting film by a periodic array of underlying clockwise and counterclockwise microcoils generating spatially periodic positive and negative magnetic field pulses and then trapped by an array of artificial pinning centers, remains stable even after the imprinting magnetic field pulse is switched off.