Laboratoire Léon Brillouin
UMR12 CEA-CNRS, Bât. 563 CEA Saclay
91191 Gif sur Yvette Cedex, France
+33-169085241 llb-sec@cea.fr
Alain Pautrat, Annie Brulet, Charles Simon, and Patrice Mathieu, Phys. Rev. B 85 (2012) 184504.
Small-angle neutron scattering is a historical technique to study the flux-lines lattice (FLL) in a superconductor. Structural characteristics of the FLL can be revealed, providing fundamental information for the physics of a vortex lattice. However, the spatial resolution is limited and all of the correlation lengths of order are difficult to extract with precision. We show here that a time-of-flight technique reveals the Bragg peak of the FLL, and also its translational order with a better resolution. We discuss the implication of these results for pinning mechanisms in a niobium sample.