Direct observation of vortex shells and magic numbers in mesoscopic superconducting disks.

We have studied vortex configurations in mesoscopic superconducting disks using the Bitter decoration technique. For a broad range of vorticities L the circular geometry is found to lead to the formation of concentric shells of vortices. From images obtained on disks of different sizes in a range of magnetic fields we traced the evolution of vortex states and identified stable and metastable configurations of interacting vortices. Furthermore, the analysis of shell filling with increasing L allowed us to identify magic numbers corresponding to the appearance of consecutive new shells.

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