Triangular arrangement of defects in a mesoscopic superconductor

Highlight: ► Internal triangular arrangement of defects in a thin disk. ► Vortex–defect interactions lead to non-commensurate vortex configurations. ► First vortex penetration occurs always through the surface near the anti-dot. ► Stable, metastable and transient vortex states with different number of defects. -- Abstract: By solving the time dependent Ginzburg–Landau equations, we investigated the influence of an internal triangular arrangement of point-like defects on the vortex configurations in a thin mesoscopic sample. The effect of the number of internal defects and their nature on the entrance position of the vortex is studied for a very thin circular sample. We found that the interplay between the vortex–vortex repulsion, the vortex–defect interaction and the interaction with the sample border leads to non-commensurate vortex configurations