ORIENTATIONAL AND POSITIONAL ORDER IN FLUX LATTICES OF TYPE-II SUPERCONDUCTORS

A detailed theory of a hexatic vortex glass, recently observed in high-T(c) superconductors, is developed. The vortex lattice in this phase is characterized by short-range positional order, which decays as exp(-alpha-r) in three dimensions (3D) and as exp(-beta-r2) in 2D, and by extended orientational correlations, which may be long range in a 3D sample and decay algebraically in a 2D film. For 2D and 3D the angular and field dependence of positional and orientational correlation functions is obtained; these may be easily tested experimentally.