Superconducting vortices provide experimental evidence that clogging is a phase transition

Clogging is a phenomenon in which moving particles get stuck, slowing or blocking the flow, but how this transition occurs has remained experimentally unproven. Researchers from Science Tokyo studied superconducting vortices to demonstrate that clogging is a nonequilibrium phase transition. Using a two-step measurement protocol, they distinguished clogging from conventional pinning and revealed that both transitions share a critical point, offering new insights into predicting and controlling clogging across diverse systems.