Nonadiabatic effects of rattling phonons and 4f excitations in Pr(Os{1-x}Ru{x})4Sb12

In the skutterudite compounds the anharmonic 'rattling' oscillations of 4f-host ions in the surrounding Sb12 cages are found to have significant influence on the low temperature properties. Recently specific heat analysis of Pr(Os{1-x}Ru{x})4Sb12 has shown that the energy of crystalline electric field (CEF) singlet-triplet excitations increases strongly with Ru-concentration x and crosses the almost constant rattling mode frequency $\omega_0$ at about x ~ 0.65. Due to magnetoelastic interactions this may entail prominent nonadiabatic effects in inelastic neutron scattering (INS) intensity and quadrupolar susceptibility. Furthermore the Ru- concentration dependence of the superconducting Tc, notably the minimum at intermediate x is explained as a crossover effect from pairforming aspherical Coulomb scattering to pairbreaking exchange scattering.Comment: 12 pages, 5 figures; to appear in Phys. Rev.

Pair-breaking in iron-pnictides

The puzzling features of the slopes of the upper critical field at the critical temperature $T_c$, $H^\prime_{c2}(T_c)\propto T_c$, and of the specific heat jump $\Delta C\propto T_c^3$ of iron-pnictides are interpreted as caused by a strong pair-breaking

Unusual field and temperature dependence of Hall effect in graphene

We calculate the classic Hall conductivity and mobility of the undoped and doped (or in the gate voltage) graphene as a function of temperature, magnetic field, and carrier concentration. Carrier collisions with defects and acoustic phonons are taken into account. The Hall resistivity varies almost linearly with temperature. The magnetic field dependence of resistivity and mobility is anomalous in weak magnetic fields. There is the square root contribution from the field in the resistivity. The Hall mobility diverges logarithmically with the field for low doping.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figures, typos correcte

Differential conductance of point contacts between an iron-based superconductor and a normal metal

We present a theoretical description of the differential conductance of point contacts between a normal metal and a multi-band superconductor with extended s\pm pairing symmetry. We demonstrate that the interband impurity scattering broadens the coherent peak near the superconducting gap and significantly reduces its height even at relatively low scattering rates. This broadening is consistent with a number of recent experiments performed for both tunnel junctions and larger diffusive contacts. Our theory helps to better evaluate the energy gap of iron-based superconductors from point contact Andreev spectroscopy measurements.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure

Maximum screening fields of superconducting multilayer structures

It is shown that a multilayer comprised of alternating thin superconducting and insulating layers on a thick substrate can fully screen the applied magnetic field exceeding the superheating fields $H_s$ of both the superconducting layers and the substrate, the maximum Meissner field is achieved at an optimum multilayer thickness. For instance, a dirty layer of thickness $\sim 0.1\; \mu$m at the Nb surface could increase $H_s\simeq 240$ mT of a clean Nb up to $H_s\simeq 290$ mT. Optimized multilayers of Nb$_3$Sn, NbN, some of the iron pnictides, or alloyed Nb deposited onto the surface of the Nb resonator cavities could potentially double the rf breakdown field, pushing the peak accelerating electric fields above 100 MV/m while protecting the cavity from dendritic thermomagnetic avalanches caused by local penetration of vortices

Ultra-cold fermions in real or fictitious magnetic fields: The BCS-BEC evolution and the type-I--type-II transition

We study ultra-cold neutral fermion superfluids in the presence of fictitious magnetic fields, as well as charged fermion superfluids in the presence of real magnetic fields. Charged fermion superfluids undergo a phase transition from type-I to type-II superfluidity, where the magnetic properties of the superfluid change from being a perfect diamagnet without vortices to a partial diamagnet with the emergence of the Abrikosov vortex lattice. The transition from type-I to type-II superfluidity is tunned by changing the scattering parameter (interaction) for fixed density. We also find that neutral fermion superfluids such as $^6$Li and $^{40}$K are extreme type-II superfluids, and that they are more robust to the penetration of a fictitious magnetic field in the BCS-BEC crossover region near unitarity, where the critical fictitious magnetic field reaches a maximum as a function of the scattering parameter (interaction).Comment: 4+ pages with 2 figure

Nonequilibrium-induced metal-superconductor quantum phase transition in graphene

We study the effects of dissipation and time-independent nonequilibrium drive on an open superconducting graphene. In particular, we investigate how dissipation and nonequilibrium effects modify the semi-metal-BCS quantum phase transition that occurs at half-filling in equilibrium graphene with attractive interactions. Our system consists of a graphene sheet sandwiched by two semi-infinite three-dimensional Fermi liquid reservoirs, which act both as a particle pump/sink and a source of decoherence. A steady-state charge current is established in the system by equilibrating the two reservoirs at different, but constant, chemical potentials. The nonequilibrium BCS superconductivity in graphene is formulated using the Keldysh path integral formalism, and we obtain generalized gap and number density equations valid for both zero and finite voltages. The behaviour of the gap is discussed as a function of both attractive interaction strength and electron densities for various graphene-reservoir couplings and voltages. We discuss how tracing out the dissipative environment (with or without voltage) leads to decoherence of Cooper pairs in the graphene sheet, hence to a general suppression of the gap order parameter at all densities. For weak enough attractive interactions we show that the gap vanishes even for electron densities away from half-filling, and illustrate the possibility of a dissipation-induced metal-superconductor quantum phase transition. We find that the application of small voltages does not alter the essential features of the gap as compared to the case when the system is subject to dissipation alone (i.e. zero voltage).Comment: 13 pages, 8 figure

Antiferromagnetic state in bilayer graphene

Motivated by the recent experiment of Velasco Jr. {\em et al.} [J. Velasco Jr. {\em et al.}, Nat. Nanotechnology 7, {\bf 156} (2012)], we develop a mean-field theory of the interaction-induced antiferromagnetic (AF) state in bilayer graphene at charge neutrality point at arbitrary perpendicular magnetic field B. We demonstrate that the AF state can persist at all $B$. At higher $B$, the state continuously crosses over to the AF phase of the $\nu=0$ quantum Hall ferromagnet, recently argued to be realized in the insulating $\nu=0$ state. The mean-field quasiparticle gap is finite at B=0 and grows with increasing B, becoming quasi-linear in the quantum Hall regime, in accord with the reported behavior of the transport gap. By adjusting the two free parameters of the model, we obtain a simultaneous quantitative agreement between the experimental and theoretical values of the key parameters of the gap dependence -- its zero-field value and slope at higher fields. Our findings suggest that the insulating state observed in bilayer graphene in Ref. 1 is antiferromagnetic (canted, once the Zeeman effect is taken into account) at all magnetic fields.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figs; v3: published versio

BCS-BEC crossover in a random external potential

We investigate the ground state properties of a disordered superfluid Fermi gas across the BCS-BEC (Bose Einstein condensate) crossover. We show that, for weak disorder, both the depletion of the condensate fraction of pairs and the normal fluid density exhibit a nonmonotonic behavior as a function of the interaction parameter $1/k_Fa$, reaching their minimum value near unitarity. We find that, moving away from the weak coupling BCS regime, Anderson's theorem ceases to apply and the superfluid order parameter is more and more affected by the random potential.Comment: Revised version, one reference added, Phys. Rev. Lett. in pres