In the field of unconventional superconductivity, a Fermi arc [1] is a phenomenon visible in the pseudogap state of a superconductor. Seen in momentum space, part of the space exhibits a gap in the density of states, like in a superconductor. This starts at the antinodal points, and spreads through momentum space when lowering the temperature until everywhere is gapped and the sample is superconducting. The area in momentum space that remains ungapped is called the Fermi arc. [2]
Fermi arcs also appear in some materials with topological properties such as Weyl semimetals where they represent a surface projection of a two dimensional Fermi contour and are terminated onto the projections of the Weyl fermion nodes on the surface.
High-temperature superconductors are defined as materials with critical temperature above 77 K, the boiling point of liquid nitrogen. They are only "high-temperature" relative to previously known superconductors, which function at even colder temperatures, close to absolute zero. The "high temperatures" are still far below ambient, and therefore require cooling. The first break through of high-temperature superconductor was discovered in 1986 by IBM researchers Georg Bednorz and K. Alex Müller. Although the critical temperature is around 35.1 K, this new type of superconductor was readily modified by Ching-Wu Chu to make the first high-temperature superconductor with critical temperature 93 K. Bednorz and Müller were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1987 "for their important break-through in the discovery of superconductivity in ceramic materials". Most high-Tc materials are type-II superconductors.
Fermi liquid theory is a theoretical model of interacting fermions that describes the normal state of the conduction electrons in most metals at sufficiently low temperatures. The theory describes the behavior of many-body systems of particles in which the interactions between particles may be strong. The phenomenological theory of Fermi liquids was introduced by the Soviet physicist Lev Davidovich Landau in 1956, and later developed by Alexei Abrikosov and Isaak Khalatnikov using diagrammatic perturbation theory. The theory explains why some of the properties of an interacting fermion system are very similar to those of the ideal Fermi gas, and why other properties differ.
In particle physics, a massless particle is an elementary particle whose invariant mass is zero. At present the only confirmed massless particle is the photon.
In condensed matter physics, the Fermi surface is the surface in reciprocal space which separates occupied from unoccupied electron states at zero temperature. The shape of the Fermi surface is derived from the periodicity and symmetry of the crystalline lattice and from the occupation of electronic energy bands. The existence of a Fermi surface is a direct consequence of the Pauli exclusion principle, which allows a maximum of one electron per quantum state. The study of the Fermi surfaces of materials is called fermiology.
In condensed matter physics, a pseudogap describes a state where the Fermi surface of a material possesses a partial energy gap, for example, a band structure state where the Fermi surface is gapped only at certain points.
Angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) is an experimental technique used in condensed matter physics to probe the allowed energies and momenta of the electrons in a material, usually a crystalline solid. It is based on the photoelectric effect, in which an incoming photon of sufficient energy ejects an electron from the surface of a material. By directly measuring the kinetic energy and emission angle distributions of the emitted photoelectrons, the technique can map the electronic band structure and Fermi surfaces. ARPES is best suited for the study of one- or two-dimensional materials. It has been used by physicists to investigate high-temperature superconductors, graphene, topological materials, quantum well states, and materials exhibiting charge density waves.
Proximity effect or Holm–Meissner effect is a term used in the field of superconductivity to describe phenomena that occur when a superconductor (S) is placed in contact with a "normal" (N) non-superconductor. Typically the critical temperature of the superconductor is suppressed and signs of weak superconductivity are observed in the normal material over mesoscopic distances. The proximity effect is known since the pioneering work by R. Holm and W. Meissner. They have observed zero resistance in SNS pressed contacts, in which two superconducting metals are separated by a thin film of a non-superconducting metal. The discovery of the supercurrent in SNS contacts is sometimes mistakenly attributed to Brian Josephson's 1962 work, yet the effect was known long before his publication and was understood as the proximity effect.
Cuprate superconductors are a family of high-temperature superconducting materials made of layers of copper oxides (CuO2) alternating with layers of other metal oxides, which act as charge reservoirs. At ambient pressure, cuprate superconductors are the highest temperature superconductors known. However, the mechanism by which superconductivity occurs is still not understood.
Subir Sachdev is Herchel Smith Professor of Physics at Harvard University specializing in condensed matter. He was elected to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences in 2014, received the Lars Onsager Prize from the American Physical Society and the Dirac Medal from the ICTP in 2018, and was elected Foreign Member of the Royal Society ForMemRS in 2023. He was a co-editor of the Annual Review of Condensed Matter Physics 2017–2019, and is Editor-in-Chief of Reports on Progress in Physics 2022-.
A topological insulator is a material whose interior behaves as an electrical insulator while its surface behaves as an electrical conductor, meaning that electrons can only move along the surface of the material.
In condensed matter physics, Luttinger's theorem is a result derived by J. M. Luttinger and J. C. Ward in 1960 that has broad implications in the field of electron transport. It arises frequently in theoretical models of correlated electrons, such as the high-temperature superconductors, and in photoemission, where a metal's Fermi surface can be directly observed.
Superstripes is a generic name for a phase with spatial broken symmetry that favors the onset of superconducting or superfluid quantum order. This scenario emerged in the 1990s when non-homogeneous metallic heterostructures at the atomic limit with a broken spatial symmetry have been found to favor superconductivity. Before a broken spatial symmetry was expected to compete and suppress the superconducting order. The driving mechanism for the amplification of the superconductivity critical temperature in superstripes matter has been proposed to be the shape resonance in the energy gap parameters ∆n that is a type of Fano resonance for coexisting condensates.
The Fulde–Ferrell–Larkin–Ovchinnikov (FFLO) phase can arise in a superconductor in large magnetic field. Among its characteristics are Cooper pairs with nonzero total momentum and a spatially non-uniform order parameter, leading to normal conducting areas in the superconductor.
In condensed matter physics, quantum oscillations describes a series of related experimental techniques used to map the Fermi surface of a metal in the presence of a strong magnetic field. These techniques are based on the principle of Landau quantization of Fermions moving in a magnetic field. For a gas of free fermions in a strong magnetic field, the energy levels are quantized into bands, called the Landau levels, whose separation is proportional to the strength of the magnetic field. In a quantum oscillation experiment, the external magnetic field is varied, which causes the Landau levels to pass over the Fermi surface, which in turn results in oscillations of the electronic density of states at the Fermi level; this produces oscillations in the many material properties which depend on this, including resistance, Hall resistance, and magnetic susceptibility. Observation of quantum oscillations in a material is considered a signature of Fermi liquid behaviour.
Distrontium ruthenate, also known as strontium ruthenate, is an oxide of strontium and ruthenium with the chemical formula Sr2RuO4. It was the first reported perovskite superconductor that did not contain copper. Strontium ruthenate is structurally very similar to the high-temperature cuprate superconductors, and in particular, is almost identical to the lanthanum doped superconductor (La, Sr)2CuO4. However, the transition temperature for the superconducting phase transition is 0.93 K (about 1.5 K for the best sample), which is much lower than the corresponding value for cuprates.
Weyl fermions are massless chiral fermions embodying the mathematical concept of a Weyl spinor. Weyl spinors in turn play an important role in quantum field theory and the Standard Model, where they are a building block for fermions in quantum field theory. Weyl spinors are a solution to the Dirac equation derived by Hermann Weyl, called the Weyl equation. For example, one-half of a charged Dirac fermion of a definite chirality is a Weyl fermion.
In physics, Dirac cones are features that occur in some electronic band structures that describe unusual electron transport properties of materials like graphene and topological insulators. In these materials, at energies near the Fermi level, the valence band and conduction band take the shape of the upper and lower halves of a conical surface, meeting at what are called Dirac points.
The term Dirac matter refers to a class of condensed matter systems which can be effectively described by the Dirac equation. Even though the Dirac equation itself was formulated for fermions, the quasi-particles present within Dirac matter can be of any statistics. As a consequence, Dirac matter can be distinguished in fermionic, bosonic or anyonic Dirac matter. Prominent examples of Dirac matter are graphene and other Dirac semimetals, topological insulators, Weyl semimetals, various high-temperature superconductors with -wave pairing and liquid helium-3. The effective theory of such systems is classified by a specific choice of the Dirac mass, the Dirac velocity, the gamma matrices and the space-time curvature. The universal treatment of the class of Dirac matter in terms of an effective theory leads to a common features with respect to the density of states, the heat capacity and impurity scattering.
Tantalum arsenide is a compound of tantalum and arsenic with the formula TaAs. It is notable as being the first topological Weyl semimetal that was identified and characterized by ARPES.