High-pressure study of the basal-plane anisotropy of the upper critical field of the topological superconductor SrxBi2Se3

We report a high-pressure transport study of the upper-critical field, $B_{c2}(T)$, of the topological superconductor Sr$_{0.15}$Bi$_2$Se$_3$ ($T_c = 3.0$ K). $B_{c2}(T)$ was measured for magnetic fields directed along two orthogonal directions, $a$ and $a^*$, in the trigonal basal plane. While superconductivity is rapidly suppressed at the critical pressure $p_c \sim 3.5$ GPa, the pronounced two-fold basal-plane anisotropy $B_{c2}^a/B_{c2}^{a^*} = 3.2$ at $T=0.3$ K, recently reported at ambient pressure (Pan et al., 2016), is reinforced and attains a value of $\sim 5$ at the highest pressure (2.2 GPa). The data reveal that the unconventional superconducting state with broken rotational symmetry is robust under pressure

Enhancement of superconductivity near the ferromagnetic quantum critical point in UCoGe

We report a high-pressure single crystal study of the superconducting ferromagnet UCoGe. Ac-susceptibility and resistivity measurements under pressures up to 2.2 GPa show ferromagnetism is smoothly depressed and vanishes at a critical pressure $p_c = 1.4$ GPa. Near the ferromagnetic critical point superconductivity is enhanced. Upper-critical field measurements under pressure show $B_{c2}(0)$ attains remarkably large values, which provides solid evidence for spin-triplet superconductivity over the whole pressure range. The obtained $p-T$ phase diagram reveals superconductivity is closely connected to a ferromagnetic quantum critical point hidden under the superconducting `dome'.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures; accepted for publication in PR

A New Clustering Method for Landsat Images Using Local Maximums of a Multidimensional Histogram

This paper describes a new clustering method for a huge satellite image. This method is composed of two major schemes, a multi-layered hashing scheme for multi-dimensional histogram (MDH) and a histogram clustering scheme using MDH. The MDH construction scheme works in 3 stages. In the 1st stage it constructs a few histogram layers for each part of an image, and in the 2nd and 3rd stages histogram layers are combined into one histogram. The clustering scheme searches for local maximums of MDH, and decides clusters around local maximums as sets of hyperrectangles. The major parameters of the clustering scheme are briefly discussed, and some results are also shown

Angular variation of the magnetoresistance of the superconducting ferromagnet UCoGe

We report a magnetoresistance study of the superconducting ferromagnet UCoGe. The data, taken on single-crystalline samples, show a pronounced structure at $B^* = 8.5$~T for a field applied along the ordered moment $m_0$. Angle dependent measurements reveal this field-induced phenomenon has an uniaxial anisotropy. Magnetoresistance measurements under pressure show a rapid increase of $B^*$ to 12.8~T at 1.0~GPa. We discuss $B^*$ in terms of a field induced polarization change. Upper critical field measurements corroborate the unusual S-shaped $B_{c2}(T)$-curve for a field along the $b$-axis of the orthorhombic unit cell.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figures; accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.

Superconductivity under pressure in the Dirac semimetal PdTe2

The Dirac semimetal PdTe$_2$ was recently reported to be a type-I superconductor ($T_c =$1.64 K, $\mu_0 H_c (0) = 13.6$ mT) with unusual superconductivity of the surface sheath. We here report a high-pressure study, $p \leq 2.5$ GPa, of the superconducting phase diagram extracted from ac-susceptibility and transport measurements on single crystalline samples. $T_c (p)$ shows a pronounced non-monotonous variation with a maximum $T_c =$1.91 K around 0.91 GPa, followed by a gradual decrease to 1.27 K at 2.5 GPa. The critical field of bulk superconductivity in the limit $T \rightarrow 0$, $H_c(0,p)$, follows a similar trend and consequently the $H_c(T,p)$-curves under pressure collapse on a single curve: $H_c(T,p)=H_c(0,p)[1-(T/T_c(p))^2]$. Surface superconductivity is robust under pressure as demonstrated by the large superconducting screening signal that persists for applied dc-fields $H_a > H_c$. Surprisingly, for $p \geq 1.41$ GPa the superconducting transition temperature at the surface $T_c^S$ is larger than $T_c$ of the bulk. Therefore surface superconductivity may possibly have a non-trivial nature and is connected to the topological surface states detected by ARPES. We compare the measured pressure variation of $T_c$ with recent results from band structure calculations and discuss the importance of a Van Hove singularity.Comment: manuscript 9 pages with 8 figures + supplemental material 3 pages with 6 figure