Field-Induced Quantum Critical Point in CeCoIn5

The resistivity of the heavy-fermion superconductor CeCoIn5 was measured as a function of temperature, down to 25 mK and in magnetic fields of up to 16 T applied perpendicular to the basal plane. With increasing field, we observe a suppression of the non-Fermi liquid behavior, rho ~ T, and the development of a Fermi liquid state, with its characteristic rho = rho_0 + AT^2 dependence. The field dependence of the T^2 coefficient shows critical behavior with an exponent of 1.37. This is evidence for a field-induced quantum critical point (QCP), occuring at a critical field which coincides, within experimental accuracy, with the superconducting critical field H_c2. We discuss the relation of this field-tuned QCP to a change in the magnetic state, seen as a change in magnetoresistance from positive to negative, at a crossover line that has a common border with the superconducting region below ~ 1 K.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures (published version

Heat Transport in a Strongly Overdoped Cuprate: Fermi Liquid and Pure d-wave BCS Superconductor

The transport of heat and charge in the overdoped cuprate superconductor Tl_2Ba_2CuO_(6+delta) was measured down to low temperature. In the normal state, obtained by applying a magnetic field greater than the upper critical field, the Wiedemann-Franz law is verified to hold perfectly. In the superconducting state, a large residual linear term is observed in the thermal conductivity, in quantitative agreement with BCS theory for a d-wave superconductor. This is compelling evidence that the electrons in overdoped cuprates form a Fermi liquid, with no indication of spin-charge separation.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, published version, title changed, Phys. Rev. Lett. 89, 147003 (2002

Transport in Ultraclean YBa2_2Cu3_3O7_7: neither Unitary nor Born Impurity Scattering

The thermal conductivity of ultraclean YBa$_2$Cu$_3$O$_7$ was measured at very low temperature in magnetic fields up to 13 T. The temperature and field dependence of the electronic heat conductivity show that two widespread assumptions of transport theory applied to unconventional superconductors fail for clean cuprates: impurity scattering cannot be treated in the usual unitary limit (nor indeed in the Born limit), and scattering of quasiparticles off vortices cannot be neglected. Our study also sheds light on the long-standing puzzle of a sudden onset of a "plateau" in the thermal conductivity of Bi-2212 versus field.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures, submitted to Physical Review Letter

The SAFRAN-ISBA-MODCOU hydrometeorological model applied over France

An edited version of this paper was published by AGU. Copyright (2008) American Geophysical UnionThe hydrometeorological model SIM consists in a meterological analysis system (SAFRAN), a land surface model (ISBA) and a hydrogeological model (MODCOU). It generates atmospheric forcing at an hourly time step, and it computes water and surface energy budgets, the river ow at more than 900 rivergauging stations, and the level of several aquifers. SIM was extended over all of France in order to have a homogeneous nation-wide monitoring of the water resources: it can therefore be used to forecast flood risk and to monitor drought risk over the entire nation. The hydrometeorologival model was applied over a 10-year period from 1995 to 2005. In this paper the databases used by the SIM model are presented, then the 10-year simulation is assessed by using the observations of daily stream-flow, piezometric head, and snow depth. This assessment shows that SIM is able to reproduce the spatial and temporal variabilities of the water fluxes. The efficiency is above 0.55 (reasonable results) for 66 % of the simulated rivergages, and above 0.65 (rather good results) for 36 % of them. However, the SIM system produces worse results during the driest years, which is more likely due to the fact that only few aquifers are simulated explicitly. The annual evolution of the snow depth is well reproduced, with a square correlation coeficient around 0.9 over the large altitude range in the domain. The stream ow observations were used to estimate the overall error of the simulated latent heat ux, which was estimated to be less than 4 %

Impact of Sleep and Circadian Disruption on Energy Balance and Diabetes: A Summary of Workshop Discussions

A workshop was held at the National Institute for Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases with a focus on the impact of sleep and circadian disruption on energy balance and diabetes. The workshop identified a number of key principles for research in this area and a number of specific opportunities. Studies in this area would be facilitated by active collaboration between investigators in sleep/circadian research and investigators in metabolism/diabetes. There is a need to translate the elegant findings from basic research into improving the metabolic health of the American public. There is also a need for investigators studying the impact of sleep/circadian disruption in humans to move beyond measurements of insulin and glucose and conduct more in-depth phenotyping. There is also a need for the assessments of sleep and circadian rhythms as well as assessments for sleep-disordered breathing to be incorporated into all ongoing cohort studies related to diabetes risk. Studies in humans need to complement the elegant short-term laboratory-based human studies of simulated short sleep and shift work etc. with studies in subjects in the general population with these disorders. It is conceivable that chronic adaptations occur, and if so, the mechanisms by which they occur needs to be identified and understood. Particular areas of opportunity that are ready for translation are studies to address whether CPAP treatment of patients with pre-diabetes and obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) prevents or delays the onset of diabetes and whether temporal restricted feeding has the same impact on obesity rates in humans as it does in mice

Thermal Conductivity across the Phase Diagram of Cuprates: Low-Energy Quasiparticles and Doping Dependence of the Superconducting Gap

Heat transport in the cuprate superconductors YBa$_2$Cu$_3$O$_{y}$ and La$_{2-x}$Sr$_x$CuO$_4$ was measured at low temperatures as a function of doping. A residual linear term kappa_{0}/T is observed throughout the superconducting region and it decreases steadily as the Mott insulator is approached from the overdoped regime. The low-energy quasiparticle gap extracted from kappa_{0}/T is seen to scale closely with the pseudogap. The ubiquitous presence of nodes and the tracking of the pseudogap shows that the overall gap remains of the pure d-wave form throughout the phase diagram, which excludes the possibility of a complex component (ix) appearing at a putative quantum phase transition and argues against a non-superconducting origin to the pseudogap. A comparison with superfluid density measurements reveals that the quasiparticle effective charge is weakly dependent on doping and close to unity.Comment: 12 pages, 9 figure

Doping dependence of the superconducting gap in Tl_2Ba_2CuO_{6+delta} from heat transport

We present low-temperature thermal conductivity measurements on the cuprate Tl_2Ba_2CuO_{6+delta} throughout the overdoped regime. In the T -> 0 limit, the thermal conductivity due to d-wave nodal quasiparticles provides a bulk measurement of the superconducting gap, Delta. We find Delta to decrease with increasing doping, with a magnitude consistent with spectroscopic measurements (photoemission and tunneling). This argues for a pure and simple d-wave superconducting state in the overdoped region of the phase diagram, which appears to extend into the underdoped regime down to a hole concentration of 0.1 hole/Cu. As hole concentration is decreased, the gap-to-Tc ratio increases, showing that the suppression of the superconducting transition temperature Tc (relative to the gap) begins in the overdoped regime.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figure

Field-induced quantum critical point in CeCoIn5. Phys

The resistivity of the heavy-fermion superconductor CeCoIn 5 was measured as a function of temperature, down to 25 mK and in magnetic fields of up to 16 T applied perpendicular to the basal plane. With increasing field, we observe a suppression of the non-Fermi liquid behavior, T, and the development of a Fermi liquid state, with its characteristic 0 AT 2 dependence. The field dependence of the T 2 coefficient shows critical behavior with an exponent of 1.37. This is evidence for a field-induced quantum critical point (QCP), occurring at a critical field which coincides, within experimental accuracy, with the superconducting critical field H c2 . We discuss the relation of this fieldtuned QCP to a change in the magnetic state, seen as a change in magnetoresistance from positive to negative, at a crossover line that has a common border with the superconducting region below 1 K. The recent discovery of a new family of heavy-fermion superconductors with the general formula CeMIn 5 (M Co; Ir; Rh or their solid solutions) has generated much interest. The ground state of these compounds can be fine-tuned between magnetic order, superconductivity, and a coexistence of the two by varying both pressure and alloy composition The peculiar magnetic properties of CeCoIn 5 are determined by the magnetic moments of Ce 3 ions and by conduction electrons. Through systematic studies of Ce 1ÿx La x CoIn 5 alloys, where the dilution of magnetic Ce ions by La (nonmagnetic analog) allows one to study the nature of intersite interactions, it has been shown that the energy scales associated with the relevant magnetic interactions are all well separated, and that the dominance of direct intersite interactions below the coherence peak temperature T coh 50 K gives rise to pronounced two-dimensional antiferromagnetic (AF) correlations The close proximity of CeCoIn 5 to an AF QCP at ambient pressure offers a unique opportunity to explore quantum critical phenomena in a system free of disorder due to alloying. Since magnetic fluctuations play an essential role in quantum criticality, the response of this system to applied magnetic fields is of clear interest. We have performed a systematic study of the low-temperature electrical resistivity of CeCoIn 5 in magnetic fields up to 16 T. We find that this system can indeed be driven through a QCP by a magnetic field, as evidenced by a divergence of the electron-electron scattering strength at the critical field and the subsequent restoration of a FL state. We show that magnetic interactions appear to play a key role in this critical behavior. Single crystals of CeCoIn 5 were grown by the self-flux metho