Imaging of artificially induced vortex structures

The combination of engineered pinning potentials in superconducting crystals, the detection of the liquid-solid vortex transition and the observation of the vortex structure with single vortex sensitivity allow the microscopic analysis of the response of 3D elastic systems to the presence of these potentials. In this work we review recent results obtained by a combination of those techniques studying different vortex structure induced transformations. On the one hand, we have visualized the transformation, along the vortex direction, of a bulk vortex single crystal with hexagonal symmetry into another crystal with square symmetry induced by an engineered Fe-dot lattice deposited on a surface of the vortex single crystal. On the other hand, we found an infrequent first-order phase transition where a vortex liquid under the presence of a random correlated potential (columnar defects) transforms into a vortex solid with no change of topological order. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.