Tuesday, March 25, 2008

The superconductivity fun continues

Another bunch of papers on the arxiv (1, 2, 3, 4, 5). The last one is particularly interesting - the group reports that replacing lanthanum with samarium boosts Tc up to 43 K. This is the first non-cuprate with a transition temperature that high. Again, it's a long way from room temperature, but the fact that there's a system besides the cuprates that shows transition temperatures this high is exciting. This may give us more clues to the mechanism at work - what is the normal state like? Are these doped Mott insulators? Do they have a pseudogap? What is the pairing symmetry?
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3 comments:

  1. Unknown1:12 PM

    What do you think about both of these together:

    http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/319/5869/1506

    http://pubs.acs.org/cgi-bin/abstract.cgi/nalefd/2008/8/i03/abs/nl071436g.html

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  2. Anonymous9:39 AM

    Couple new papers:

    http://arxiv.org/abs/0803.3978,
    http://arxiv.org/abs/0803.3982,

    plus I think you missed the relatively important

    http://arxiv.org/abs/0803.0928

    Amazing stuff!

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  3. Douglas Natelson2:16 PM

    Thanks for all the links. Based on the most recent work in the FeAs superconductors, I issue the following bold prediction: just as LaOFFeAs superconducts, and SmOFFeAs, and CeOFFeAs, I suspect that people will find superconductivity in the related Pr and Nd compounds. This amazing prognostication brought to you by the periodic table.

    Jonah, the silane paper is cool but unless the superconductivity is unconventional or there's a way to translate that into other systems that work at ambient pressure, I'm not sure how big the long term impact will be. FWIW, oxygen also superconducts.

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