Dendritic flux avalanches in rectangular superconducting films -- numerical simulations

Dendritic flux avalanches is a frequently encountered instability in the vortex matter of type II superconducting films at low temperatures. Previously, linear stability analysis has shown that such avalanches should be nucleated where the flux penetration is deepest. To check this prediction we do numerical simulations on a superconducting rectangle. We find that at low substrate temperature the first avalanches appear exactly in the middle of the long edges, in agreement with the predictions. At higher substrate temperature, where there are no clear predictions from the theory, we find that the location of the first avalanche is decided by fluctuations due to the randomly distributed disorder.