Anti-hyperuniform diluted vortex matter induced by correlated disorder

Abstract

Disordered hyperuniform materials are very promising for applications but the successful route for synthesizing them requires understanding the interactions induced by the host media that can switch off this hidden order. With this aim we study the model system of vortices in the $eta$−Bi$_2$⁢Pd superconductor where correlated defects seem to play a determinant role for the nucleation of a gel vortex phase at low densities. We directly image vortices in extended fields of view and show that the disordered vortex structure in this material is anti-hyperuniform, contrasting with the case of vortex structures nucleated in samples with pointlike disorder. Based on numerical simulations, we show that this anti-hyperuniform structure arises both from the interaction of a diluted vortex structure with a fourfold-symmetric correlated disorder quite likely generated when cleaving the samples and from the out-of-equilibrium nature of the quenched configuration.