Dynamic Josephson Vortex Phenomena

Large 2-dimensional arrays of Josephson junctions are populated by Josephson vortices which not only play an important role in its transport properties, but also undergo phase transitions, such as the BKT transition where vortex pairs unbind, and the vortex Mott transition, where under an applied bias a small magnetic field dopes the array with vortices which break superconductivity analogous to a Mott metal-to-insulator transition. In this thesis both experiments and computer simulations were done to investigate the critical behavior of the Vortex Mott transition by means of scaling analysis on transport properties. To be able to obtain accurate enough results, computations were done on graphics processing units (GPUs). The experimental data found critical in agreement with the Mott metal-to-insulator transition, but the simulations suggest a refinement in the scaling function was needed to account for the data, possibly indicating a new type of behavior.