News at PQM

The hardness of a material normally is set by the strength of chemical bonds between electrons of neighbouring atoms, not by freely flowing conduction electrons. Now a team of scientists from MPI-CPfS, Germany, Japan, Korea and the United States has shown that current-carrying electrons can make the lattice much softer than usual in the material Sr₂RuO₄. more

Warm congratulations to Dr Elena Gati, who has been promoted to a W2 position in the physics of Quantum Materials department. more

A team of scientists from the MPI CPFS and Stockholm, Tsukuba, Oxford, Toronto, St Andrews and Birmingham combined focused ion beam microstructuring and uniaxial pressure to achieve a record value of uniaxial pressure for the unconventional superconductor Sr₂RuO₄ and found that the superconducting state of Sr₂RuO₄ evolved surprisingly. more

Working with a new experimental technique called the ac elastocaloric effect, a team of scientists from Dresden, Karlsruhe, St Andrews, Cornell, Tsukuba and Stanford has mapped out the so-called phase diagram of the unconventional superconductor Sr₂RuO₄. The results narrow down the on-going, 25 years quest to understand the superconductivity of Sr₂RuO₄ and set a benchmark for future work. more

The study of ultra-pure materials still has many ways to surprise and delight! For delafossite metals it was shown that wires sculpted from the same single crystal have very different resistivities depending on the angle at which they are cut.  From the fundamental physics point of view, the laws of bulk resistivity are being broken.
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Warmest congratulations to Mário Moda Piva, who has been awarded a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship. more

The unconventional superconductor CeRh₂As₂ may host a “quadrupole density wave” - a theorized complex ordering pattern among free electrons that has not yet been observed. more