Figure 2.

(a) Critical current density J_c and (b) critical current I_c = J_cW as a function of width W of the ideal superconducting strip containing no inclusions in magnetic field B = 0.1H_c2 applied perpendicular to the strip. The critical current is defined by strip boundaries only and saturates at I_c ≈ 5J_dpξ (green dashed line) for $W\gtrsim 64\xi$ due to the absence of pinning potentials in the bulk. Certain vortex configurations with few commensurate vortex rows (in particular the 4 and 5 row configuration) are very stable due to geometrical pinning and can have larger critical currents than the saturation value, see ref.¹⁰. Artifacts from the constant voltage criterion, used to determine the critical current, for wide clean strips are removed, see text.