Self-organized superconducting textures in thin films

The interplay between the superconducting order parameter and elastic fields, which are intimately connected to the very existence of the superconductivity itself, can result in a novel superconducting state: a regular self-organized texture of superconducting islands. We study the formation of these islands in a system of a thin superconducting film coupled elastically to a more rigid substrate and derive the phase diagram below the superconducting critical temperature depending on the elastic coupling constant of both subsystems. The fact that this pattern is a result of the Ginzburg-Landau description of superconductivity indicates that the formation of regular structures may be a common feature of the superconductor transition in the presence of long-range coupling.