News at PQM

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

The phenomenon of superconductivity, providing current transmission without dissipation and a host of unique magnetic properties arising from macroscopic quantum coherence, was first discovered over a century ago. It was not understood until 1957, after which it quickly became clear that superconductors could in principle exist with a wide variety of the fundamental characteristic often referred to as the order parameter. Until the late 1970’s, however, all superconductors found experimentally had the same class of order parameter. more

The analogy between the behaviour of different quantum particles which have the same quantum nature is one of the most fascinating aspects of science. A simple but prominent example is the analogy between the behaviour of electrons (fermions) in a one-dimensional metal and spinons (fermions) in a one-dimensional quantum magnet. But, what are spinons? more