title: Evaporation of the pancake-vortex lattice in weakly coupled layered superconductors
abstract: We calculate the melting line of the pancake-vortex system in a layered superconductor, interpolating between two-dimensional (2D) melting at high fields and the zero-field limit of single-stack evaporation. Long-range interactions between pancake vortices in different layers permit a mean-field approach, the "substrate model, " where each 2D crystal fluctuates in a substrate potential due to the vortices in other layers. We find the thermal stability limit of the 3D solid, and compare the free energy to a 2D liquid to determine the first-order melting transition and its jump in entropy.
authors.affiliation: Theoretische Physik, ETH-Honggerberg, CH-8093, Zurich, Switzerland.
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Dodgson
authors.initials: AE
authors.lastname: Koshelev
authors.initials: VB
authors.lastname: Geshkenbein
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Blatter