Abstract
The peak effect (PE) in the critical current density of type II superconductors has been related to an order-disorder transition in the vortex lattice (VL), but its underlying physics remains a controversial issue. Intrinsic to the PE are strong metastabilities that frequently mask the stationary VL configurations. We follow shaking and thermal protocols in NbSe2 single crystals to access these configurations and examine them by linear ac susceptibility measurements that avoid VL reorganization. We identify three different regions. For T<T1(H), stable VL configurations are maximally ordered. For T>T2(H), configurations are fully disordered and no metastability is observed. In the T1<T<T2 region, we find temperature-dependent stable configurations with an intermediate degree of disorder, possibly associated with the coexistence of ordered and disordered lattices throughout the PE.
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