238 research outputs found
Carbon isotope effect in superconducting MgCNi_3
The effect of Carbon isotope substitution on T_c in the intermetallic
perovskite superconductor MgCNi_3 is reported. Four independent groups of
samples were synthesized and characterized. The average T_c for the Carbon-12
samples was found to be 7.12(2) K and the average T_c for the Carbon-13 samples
was found to be 6.82(2) K. The resulting carbon isotope effect coefficient is
alfa_C = 0.54(3). This indicates that carbon-based phonons play a critical role
in the presence of superconductivity in this compound.Comment: To be published in Phys. Rev. B. 4 pages, 1 figur
Large enhancement of the thermopower in NaCoO at high Na doping
Research on the oxide perovskites has uncovered electronic properties that
are strikingly enhanced compared with those in conventional metals. Examples
are the high critical temperatures of the cuprate superconductors and the
colossal magnetoresistance in the manganites. The conducting layered cobaltate
displays several interesting electronic phases as is varied
including water-induced superconductivity and an insulating state that is
destroyed by field. Initial measurements showed that, in the as-grown
composition, displays moderately large thermopower and
conductivity . However, the prospects for thermoelectric cooling
applications faded when the figure of merit was found to be small at this
composition (0.60.7). Here we report that, in the poorly-explored
high-doping region 0.75, undergoes an even steeper enhancement. At the
critical doping 0.85, (at 80 K) reaches values 40 times
larger than in the as-grown crystals. We discuss prospects for low-temperature
thermoelectric applications.Comment: 6 pages, 7 figure
Non-cubic layered structure of Ba(1-x)K(x)BiO3 superconductor
Bismuthate superconductor Ba(1-x)K(x)BiO3 (x=0.27-0.49, Tc=25-32K) grown by
an electrolysis technique was studied by electron diffraction and
high-resolution electron microscopy. The crystalline structure thereof has been
found to be non-cubic, of the layered nature, and non-centrosymmetric, with the
lattice parameters a ~ ap, c ~ 2ap (ap is a simple cubic perovskite cell
parameter) containing an ordered arrangement of barium and potassium. The
evidence for the layered nature of the bismuthate superconductor removes the
principal crystallographic contradiction between bismuthate and cuprate high-Tc
superconductors.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, to be published in Physical Review B as a Rapid
Communicatio
Phase diagram of the one-dimensional extended attractive Hubbard model for large nearest-neighbor repulsion
We consider the extended Hubbard model with attractive on-site interaction U
and nearest-neighbor repulsions V. We construct an effective Hamiltonian
H_{eff} for hopping t<<V and arbitrary U<0. Retaining the most important terms,
H_{eff} can be mapped onto two XXZ models, solved by the Bethe ansatz. The
quantum phase diagram shows two Luttinger liquid phases and a region of phase
separation between them. For density n<0.422 and U<-4, singlet superconducting
correlations dominate at large distances. For some parameters, the results are
in qualitative agreement with experiments in BaKBiO.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev.
Doping Dependence of the Electronic Structure of Ba_{1-x}K_{x}BiO_{3} Studied by X-Ray Absorption Spectroscopy
We have performed x-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) and x-ray photoemission
spectroscopy (XPS) studies of single crystal Ba_{1-x}K_{x}BiO_{3} (BKBO)
covering the whole composition range . Several features in
the oxygen 1\textit{s} core XAS spectra show systematic changes with .
Spectral weight around the absorption threshold increases with hole doping and
shows a finite jump between and 0.40, which signals the
metal-insulator transition. We have compared the obtained results with
band-structure calculations. Comparison with the XAS results of
BaPb_{1-x}Bi_{x}O_{3} has revealed quite different doping dependences between
BKBO and BPBO. We have also observed systematic core-level shifts in the XPS
spectra as well as in the XAS threshold as functions of , which can be
attributed to a chemical potential shift accompanying the hole doping. The
observed chemical potential shift is found to be slower than that predicted by
the rigid band model based on the band-structure calculations.Comment: 8 pages, 8 figures include
Dynamics of Stripes in Doped Antiferromagnets
We study the dynamics of the striped phase, which has previously been
suggested to be the ground state of a doped antiferromagnet. Starting from the
t-J model, we derive the classical equation governing the motion of the charged
wall by using a ficticious spin model as an intermediate step. A wave-like
equation of motion is obtained and the wall elasticity and mass density
constants are derived in terms of the t and J parameters. The wall is then
regarded as an elastic string which will be trapped by the pinning potential
produced by randomly distributed impurities. We evaluate the pinning potential
and estimate the threshold electric field which has to be applied to the system
in order to release the walls. Besides, the dynamics of the stripe in the
presence of a bias field below the threshold is considered and the high- and
low-temperature relaxation rates are derived.Comment: 22 pages, RevTeX, 3 PS-figure
Simple de Sitter Solutions
We present a framework for de Sitter model building in type IIA string
theory, illustrated with specific examples. We find metastable dS minima of the
potential for moduli obtained from a compactification on a product of two Nil
three-manifolds (which have negative scalar curvature) combined with
orientifolds, branes, fractional Chern-Simons forms, and fluxes. As a discrete
quantum number is taken large, the curvature, field strengths, inverse volume,
and four dimensional string coupling become parametrically small, and the de
Sitter Hubble scale can be tuned parametrically smaller than the scales of the
moduli, KK, and winding mode masses. A subtle point in the construction is that
although the curvature remains consistently weak, the circle fibers of the
nilmanifolds become very small in this limit (though this is avoided in
illustrative solutions at modest values of the parameters). In the simplest
version of the construction, the heaviest moduli masses are parametrically of
the same order as the lightest KK and winding masses. However, we provide a
method for separating these marginally overlapping scales, and more generally
the underlying supersymmetry of the model protects against large corrections to
the low-energy moduli potential.Comment: 37 pages, harvmac big, 4 figures. v3: small correction
What are the experimentally observable effects of vertex corrections in superconductors?
We calculate the effects of vertex corrections, of non-constant density of
states and of a (self-consistently determined) phonon self-energy for the
Holstein model on a 3D cubic lattice. We replace vertex corrections with a
Coulomb pseudopotential, mu*, adjusted to give the same Tc, and repeat the
calculations, to see which effects are a distinct feature of vertex
corrections. This allows us to determine directly observable effects ofvertex
corrections on a variety of thermodynamic properties of superconductors. To
this end, we employ conserving approximations (in the local approximation) to
calculate the superconducting critical temperatures, isotope coefficients,
superconducting gaps, free-energy differences and thermodynamic critical fields
for a range of parameters. We find that the dressed value of lambda is
significantly larger than the bare value. While vertex corrections can cause
significant changes in all the above quantities (even whenthe bare
electron-phonon coupling is small), the changes can usually be well-modeled by
an appropriate Coulomb pseudopotential. The isotope coefficient proves to be
the quantity that most clearly shows effects of vertex corrections that can not
be mimicked by a mu*.Comment: 28 pages, 12 figure
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