Abstract
The magnetic phase diagram of high-temperature superconductors can contain many exotic vortex phases not observed in conventional superconducting materials. For example, the familiar vortex lattice may melt at high temperatures into a vortex liquid. The influence of defects, which pin the vortices, is of particular interest from both a theoretical and an experimental point of view. We have used small angle neutron scattering (SANS) to probe the order of the vortex system on a microscopic scale and have succeeded, for the first time, to measure a well-ordered vortex lattice (VL) structure at all doping regimes of La 2− x Sr x CuO 4. In the optimally to overdoped regime a field-induced transition from hexagonal to square coordination is reported. The possible connections of our SANS results to photoemission data, as well as the implications for various competing theoretical models will be discussed.
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