In silico optimization of critical currents in superconductors

For many technological applications of superconductors the performance of a material is determined by the highest current it can carry losslessly-the critical current. In turn, the critical current can be controlled by adding nonsuperconducting defects in the superconductor matrix. Here we report on systematic comparison of different local and global optimization strategies to predict optimal structures of pinning centers leading to the highest possible critical currents. We demonstrate performance of these methods for a superconductor with randomly placed spherical, elliptical, and columnar defects.