Unconventional superconductors are materials that display superconductivity which does not conform to either the conventional BCS theory or Nikolay Bogolyubov's theory or its extensions.
Microwave spectroscopy is the spectroscopy method that employs microwaves, i.e. electromagnetic radiation at GHz frequencies, for the study of matter.
In physics, topological order is a kind of order in the zero-temperature phase of matter. Macroscopically, topological order is defined and described by robust ground state degeneracy and quantized non-Abelian geometric phases of degenerate ground states. Microscopically, topological orders correspond to patterns of long-range quantum entanglement. States with different topological orders cannot change into each other without a phase transition.
A Majorana fermion, also referred to as a Majorana particle, is a fermion that is its own antiparticle. They were hypothesised by Ettore Majorana in 1937. The term is sometimes used in opposition to a Dirac fermion, which describes fermions that are not their own antiparticles.
In a standard superconductor, described by a complex field fermionic condensate wave function, vortices carry quantized magnetic fields because the condensate wave function is invariant to increments of the phase by . There a winding of the phase by creates a vortex which carries one flux quantum. See quantum vortex.
The quantum spin Hall state is a state of matter proposed to exist in special, two-dimensional semiconductors that have a quantized spin-Hall conductance and a vanishing charge-Hall conductance. The quantum spin Hall state of matter is the cousin of the integer quantum Hall state, and that does not require the application of a large magnetic field. The quantum spin Hall state does not break charge conservation symmetry and spin- conservation symmetry.
Within quantum technology, a quantum sensor utilizes properties of quantum mechanics, such as quantum entanglement, quantum interference, and quantum state squeezing, which have optimized precision and beat current limits in sensor technology. The field of quantum sensing deals with the design and engineering of quantum sources and quantum measurements that are able to beat the performance of any classical strategy in a number of technological applications. This can be done with photonic systems or solid state systems.
Iron-based superconductors (FeSC) are iron-containing chemical compounds whose superconducting properties were discovered in 2006. In 2008, led by recently discovered iron pnictide compounds, they were in the first stages of experimentation and implementation..
The 122 iron arsenide unconventional superconductors are part of a new class of iron-based superconductors. They form in the tetragonal I4/mmm, ThCr2Si2 type, crystal structure. The shorthand name "122" comes from their stoichiometry; the 122s have the chemical formula AEFe2Pn2, where AE stands for alkaline earth metal (Ca, Ba, Sr or Eu) and Pn is pnictide (As, P, etc.). These materials become superconducting under pressure and also upon doping. The maximum superconducting transition temperature found to date is 38 K in the Ba0.6K0.4Fe2As2. The microscopic description of superconductivity in the 122s is yet unclear.
Resonant inelastic X-ray scattering (RIXS) is an X-ray spectroscopy technique used to investigate the electronic structure of molecules and materials.
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.
Heavy fermion superconductors are a type of unconventional superconductor.
Hughes–Drever experiments are spectroscopic tests of the isotropy of mass and space. Although originally conceived of as a test of Mach's principle, they are now understood to be an important test of Lorentz invariance. As in Michelson–Morley experiments, the existence of a preferred frame of reference or other deviations from Lorentz invariance can be tested, which also affects the validity of the equivalence principle. Thus these experiments concern fundamental aspects of both special and general relativity. Unlike Michelson–Morley type experiments, Hughes–Drever experiments test the isotropy of the interactions of matter itself, that is, of protons, neutrons, and electrons. The accuracy achieved makes this kind of experiment one of the most accurate confirmations of relativity .
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.
Dimitri Roditchev is a French physicist of Russian-Ukrainian origin, specializing in electronic properties of nano-materials, superconductors, electron transport, and quantum tunneling phenomena. He is a professor at ESPCI ParisTech and a research director at CNRS.
Uranium ruthenium silicide (URu2Si2) is a heavy fermion alloy composed of uranium, ruthenium, and silicon. URu2Si2 has the same '122' tetragonal crystal structure as many other compounds of present condensed matter research. URu2Si2 is a superconductor with a hastatic order (HO) phase below a temperature of 17.5 K. Below this temperature, it is magnetic, and below about 1.5 K it superconducts. However, the nature of the ordered phase below 17.5K is still under debate despite a wide variety of scenarios that have been proposed to explain this phase.
Dirac cones, named after Paul Dirac, 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.
Fabrizio Carbone is an Italian and Swiss physicist and currently an Associate Professor at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL). His research focuses on the study of matter in out of equilibrium conditions using ultrafast spectroscopy, diffraction and imaging techniques. In 2015, he attracted international attention by publishing a photography of light displaying both its quantum and classical nature.
Alexander Avraamovitch Golubov is a doctor of physical and mathematical sciences, associate professor at the University of Twente (Netherlands). He specializes in condensed matter physics with the focus on theory of electronic transport in superconducting devices. He made key contributions to theory of Josephson effect in novel superconducting materials and hybrid structures, and to theory of multiband superconductivity.
Christopher John Pethick is a British theoretical physicist, specializing in many-body theory, ultra-cold atomic gases, and the physics of neutron stars and stellar collapse.
Estonia/
US