Abstract
The vortex penetration and vortex dynamics are significantly important to superconducting devices, for example the superconducting cavities, since the vortex motions would create substantial dissipation. In experiments, different kinds of defects, as well as different degrees of surface roughness were observed. By considering these in superconductor-insulator-superconductor (SIS) structures, the vortex penetration and vortex dynamics are very complex due to the interactions with defects and the influence of surface roughness, especially for radio-frequency (RF) magnetic field, which are quite different from ideal defect-free SIS multilayer structures. In this paper, within Ginzburg-Landau theory, we perform numerical simulations to study the effects of nanoscale defects, surface roughness, and cracks in the coating layer on the vortex penetration and superheating field in Nb3Sn-I-Nb multilayer structures exposed to a quasi-static magnetic field. The validations of the numerical simulations are verified by good consistency with previous theoretical results in ideal defect-free SIS multilayer and single Nb structures. Furthermore, we explore the vortex dynamics and induced voltages in SIS multilayer structures exposed to RF magnetic fields for both ideal defect-free structures and real situations including surface roughness. Our numerical simulations indicate that, unlike the quasi-static case, the advantage of SIS multilayer structures over a single Nb structure depends on the degrees of surface roughness as well as the frequency and amplitude of the RF magnetic field. The results of this paper provide deep insight to evaluate the actual performance-limiting of next-generation superconducting radio-frequency (SRF) cavities with different proposed candidate materials, which are quite susceptible to nonideal surface.