Collective and plastic vortex motion probed by STM

The motion of flux line lattices (VL) in various single crystals of NbSe₂ has been observed using fast scanning tunneling microscopy. In crystals with intrinsic weak point disorder the VL creeps coherently as a large bundle along one of the principal axes of the VL. However, we observe striking and for the creep regime unanticipated velocity modulations in the direction of motion, related to the VL periodicity, i.e. with the “washboard” frequency. In the transverse direction the fluctuations of the center-of-mass displacement are random. In crystals with strong line disorder (correlated pinning) caused by columnar defects due to swift ion irradiation collective pinning is observed in fields up to almost double the dose-equivalent field Bφ while interesting plastic flow patterns are detected at 2Bφ.