The hexatic fluid refers to a phase in between a solid and a liquid which has short range positional order but quasi-long range orientational order. In the celebrated theory of Berezinskii, Kosterlitz and Thouless and subsequently refined by Halperin, Nelson and Young, it was predicted that a 2-dimensional hexagonal solid can melt in two steps: first, through a transformation from a solid to a hexatic fluid which retains quasi long range orientational order and then from a hexatic fluid to an isotropic liquid. In this paper, using a combination of real space imaging and transport measurements we show that the 2dimensional vortex lattice in a-MoGe thin film follows this sequence of melting as the magnetic field is increased. Identifying the signatures of various transitions on the bulk transport properties of the superconductor, we construct a vortex phase diagram for a two dimensional superconductor.

We investigate the magnetic field variation of the thermally activated flux flow resistivity, ρ TAFF and flux flow critical current density, J c , in a weakly pinned thin film of the amorphous superconductor aMoGe, where vortices are in a fluid state over a large range of magnetic fields. We show that both quantities can be understood within the framework of collective pinning theory. In particular, our results demonstrate that a 'peak effect' can arise at the order-disorder transition of the vortex lattice even when both the ordered and disordered states are vortex fluids, such as the boundary between a hexatic vortex fluid and an isotropic vortex liquid.

We investigate the evolution of superconductivity with decreasing film thickness in ultrathin amorphous MoGe (a-MoGe) films using a combination of sub-Kelvin scanning tunneling spectroscopy, magnetic penetration depth measurements and magneto-transport measurements. We observe that superconductivity is strongly affected by quantum and classical phase fluctuations for thickness below 5 nm. The superfluid density is strongly suppressed by quantum phase fluctuations at low temperatures and evolves towards a linear-T dependence at higher temperatures. This is associated with a rapid decrease in the superconducting transition temperature, Tc, and the emergence of a pronounced pseudogap above Tc. These observations suggest that at strong disorder the destruction of superconductivity follows a Bosonic route where the global superconducting state is destroyed by phase fluctuations even though the pairing amplitude remains finite.In the late fifties, Anderson 1 predicted that in an s-wave superconductor the attractive pairing interaction forming Cooper pairs would remain largely unaffected by the presence of non-magnetic impurities. This has been loosely interpreted to imply that the superconducting transition temperature, Tc will also not be strongly sensitive to disorder scattering. However, later experiments showed that this is valid only in the limit of weak disorder: In the presence of strong disorder, Tc gets gradually suppressed 2,3 and eventually the material is driven into a non-superconducting state. The mechanism driving the transition from a superconductor to an insulator or a metal has been a subject of considerable debate. In principle, the suppression of Tc with increase in disorder can happen from two origins. The first mechanism is through the loss of effective screening with increase in disorder that weakens the attractive pairing interaction, and thus suppresses the mean field transition temperature 4,5 . The second mechanism results from the decrease in superfluid density, ns, induced by disorder scattering, which renders the superconductor susceptible to phase fluctuations 6,7 . When ns is small, the phase coherent superconducting state can get destroyed due to strong phase fluctuations even when the pairing amplitude remains finite 8,9,10 .The superconductor to non-superconductor transition driven by these two mechanisms are often classified as the Fermionic and Bosonic routes respectively 11 . In the Fermionic route, the pairing attraction drops to zero at a critical disorder where superconductivity is destroyed. This non-superconducting state is either a bad metal or an Anderson insulator. In the Bosonic mechanism the pairing interaction remains finite and therefore signatures of Cooper pairing continue to survive even in the non-superconducting state.Experimentally, this manifests as a persistence of the superconducting gap in the electronic excitation spectrum, known as the pseudogap, even after the global superconducting state is destroyed 12,13,14,15 .However, recent studies indicate that th...

Recently, detailed real space imaging using scanning tunneling spectroscopy of the vortex lattice in a weakly pinned a-MoGe thin film revealed that the vortex lattice melts in two steps with temperature or magnetic field, going first from a vortex solid to a hexatic vortex fluid and then from a hexatic vortex fluid to an isotropic vortex liquid. In this paper, we show that the resistance in the hexatic vortex fluid state is extremely sensitive to radio-frequency electromagnetic perturbation. In the presence of very low-amplitude excitation above few kilohertz, the resistance increases by several orders of magnitude. On the other hand when the superconductor is well shielded from external electromagnetic radiation, the dissipation in the sample is very small and the resistance is below our detection limit. 1 pratap@tifr.res.in

No abstract