Threading dislocation lines in two-sided flux array decorations

TL;DR

This paper investigates the behavior of threading dislocation lines in flux array decorations, analyzing their elastic energy and fluctuations to understand their metastable states and material properties.

Contribution

It introduces a model treating TDLs as anisotropic, dispersive strings with thermal fluctuations, linking their behavior to elastic moduli estimation.

Findings

TDLs can be trapped in metastable states.

Thermal fluctuations modify the structure factor of the vortex solid.

Elastic energy calculations can help estimate material elastic moduli.

Abstract

Two-sided flux decoration experiments indicate that threading dislocation lines (TDLs), which cross the entire film, are sometimes trapped in metastable states. We calculate the elastic energy associated with the meanderings of a TDL. The TDL behaves as an anisotropic and dispersive string with thermal fluctuations largely along its Burger's vector. These fluctuations also modify the structure factor of the vortex solid. Both effects can in principle be used to estimate the elastic moduli of the material.