We report experimental evidence of strong orientational coupling between the crystal lattice and the vortex lattice in a weakly pinned Co-doped NbSe2 single crystal through direct imaging using low temperature scanning tunneling microscopy/spectrosco
py. At low fields, when the magnetic field is applied along the six-fold symmetric c-axis of the NbSe2 crystal, the equilibrium configuration of the vortex lattice is preferentially aligned along the basis vectors of the crystal lattice. The orientational coupling between the vortex lattice and crystal lattice becomes more pronounced as the magnetic field is increased. We show that this coupling enhances the stability of the orientational order of the vortex lattice, which persists even in the disordered state at high fields where dislocations and disclinations have destroyed the topological order.
The breakdown of crystalline order in a disordered background connects to some of the most challenging problems in condensed matter physics. For a superconducting vortex lattice, the equilibrium state in the presence of impurities is predicted to be
a Bragg glass (BG), where the local crystalline order is maintained everywhere and yet the global positional order decays algebraically. Here, using scanning tunnelling spectroscopy (STS) we image the vortex lattice in a weakly pinned NbSe2 single crystal. We present direct evidence that the ordered state of the VL is a BG, consisting of a large number of degenerate metastable states, which is a hallmark of a glassy state. These results are a significant step towards understanding the disordering of a lattice under the influence of quenched random disorder with a direct impact on various fields, including charge density waves, colloidal crystals and self-organised periodic structures on a substrate.
