title: Disorder induced transitions in layered coulomb gases and superconductors
abstract: A 3D layered system of charges with logarithmic interaction parallel to the layers and random dipoles is studied via a novel variational method and an energy rationale which reproduces the known phase diagram for a single layer. Increasing interlayer coupling leads to successive transitions in which charge rods correlated in N>1 neighboring layers are nucleated by weaker disorder. For layered superconductors in the limit of only magnetic interlayer coupling, the method predicts and locates a disorder induced defect-unbinding transition in the flux lattice. While N = 1 charges dominate there, N>1 disorder induced defect rods are predicted for multilayer superconductors.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, Ben Gurion University, Beer Sheva 84105, Israel.
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Horovitz
authors.lastname: Le Doussal P