Real-space vortex glass imaging and the magnetic phase diagram of the low-Tc superconductor SnMo6S8

A. PETROVIÇ; YANINA FASANO; R. LORTZ; C. SENATORE; A. DEMUER; A. B. ANTUNES; A. PARÉ; D. SALLOUM; P. GOUGEON; M. POTEL; Ø. FISCHER

PHYSICAL REVIEW LETTERS

AMER PHYSICAL SOC

Año: 2009 vol. 103 p. 257001 - 257004

0031-9007

Using scanning tunneling microscopy at 400 mK, we have obtained maps of around 100 vortices in SnMo6S8 from 2–9 T. The orientational and positional disorder at 5 and 9 T show that these are the first large-scale images of a vortex glass. At higher temperature a magnetization peak effect is observed, whose upper boundary coincides with a lambda anomaly in the specific heat. Our data favor a kinetic glass description of the vortex melting transition, indicating that vortex topological disorder persists at fields and temperatures far below the peak effect in low-Tc superconductors.