Temperature - pressure phase diagram of the superconducting iron pnictide LiFeP

Electrical-resistivity and magnetic-susceptibility measurements under hydrostatic pressure up to p = 2.75 GPa have been performed on superconducting LiFeP. A broad superconducting (SC) region exists in the temperature - pressure (T-p) phase diagram. No indications for a spin-density-wave transition have been found, but an enhanced resistivity coefficient at low pressures hints at the presence of magnetic fluctuations. Our results show that the superconducting state in LiFeP is more robust than in the isostructural and isoelectronic LiFeAs. We suggest that this finding is related to the nearly regular [FeP_4] tetrahedron in LiFeP.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

A new 111 type iron pnictide superconductor LiFeP

A new iron pnictide LiFeP superconductor was found. The compound crystallizes into a Cu2Sb structure containing an FeP layer showing superconductivity with maximum Tc of 6K. This is the first 111 type iron pnictide superconductor containing no arsenic. The new superconductor is featured with itinerant behavior at normal state that could helpful to understand the novel superconducting mechanism of iron pnictide compounds.Comment: 3 figures + 1 tabl

Parity independence of the zero-bias conductance peak in a nanowire based topological superconductor-quantum dot hybrid device

We explore the signatures of Majorana fermions in a nanowire based topological superconductor-quantum dot-topological superconductor hybrid device by charge transport measurements. The device is made from an epitaxially grown InSb nanowire with two superconductor Nb contacts on a Si/SiO$_2$ substrate. At low temperatures, a quantum dot is formed in the segment of the InSb nanowire between the two Nb contacts and the two Nb contacted segments of the InSb nanowire show superconductivity due to the proximity effect. At zero magnetic field, well defined Coulomb diamonds and the Kondo effect are observed in the charge stability diagram measurements in the Coulomb blockade regime of the quantum dot. Under the application of a finite, sufficiently strong magnetic field, a zero-bias conductance peak structure is observed in the same Coulomb blockade regime. It is found that the zero-bias conductance peak is present in many consecutive Coulomb diamonds, irrespective of the even-odd parity of the quasi-particle occupation number in the quantum dot. In addition, we find that the zero-bias conductance peak is in most cases accompanied by two differential conductance peaks, forming a triple-peak structure, and the separation between the two side peaks in bias voltage shows oscillations closely correlated to the background Coulomb conductance oscillations of the device. The observed zero-bias conductance peak and the associated triple-peak structure are in line with the signatures of Majorana fermion physics in a nanowire based topological superconductor-quantum dot-topological superconductor system, in which the two Majorana bound states adjacent to the quantum dot are hybridized into a pair of quasi-particle states with finite energies and the other two Majorana bound states remain as the zero-energy modes located at the two ends of the entire InSb nanowire.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figure

Formation of Long Single Quantum Dots in High Quality InSb Nanowires Grown by Molecular Beam Epitaxy

We report on realization and transport spectroscopy study of single quantum dots (QDs) made from InSb nanowires grown by molecular beam epitaxy (MBE). The nanowires employed are 50-80 nm in diameter and the QDs are defined in the nanowires between the source and drain contacts on a Si/SiO$_2$ substrate. We show that highly tunable QD devices can be realized with the MBE-grown InSb nanowires and the gate-to-dot capacitance extracted in the many-electron regimes is scaled linearly with the longitudinal dot size, demonstrating that the devices are of single InSb nanowire QDs even with a longitudinal size of ~700 nm. In the few-electron regime, the quantum levels in the QDs are resolved and the Land\'e g-factors extracted for the quantum levels from the magnetotransport measurements are found to be strongly level-dependent and fluctuated in a range of 18-48. A spin-orbit coupling strength is extracted from the magnetic field evolutions of a ground state and its neighboring excited state in an InSb nanowire QD and is on the order of ~300 $\mu$eV. Our results establish that the MBE-grown InSb nanowires are of high crystal quality and are promising for the use in constructing novel quantum devices, such as entangled spin qubits, one-dimensional Wigner crystals and topological quantum computing devices.Comment: 19 pages, 5 figure

Chemical abundance analysis of 19 barium stars

We aim at deriving accurate atmospheric parameters and chemical abundances of 19 barium (Ba) stars, including both strong and mild Ba stars, based on the high signal-to-noise ratio and high resolution Echelle spectra obtained from the 2.16 m telescope at Xinglong station of National Astronomical Observatories, Chinese Academy of Sciences. The chemical abundances of the sample stars were obtained from an LTE, plane-parallel and line-blanketed atmospheric model by inputting the atmospheric parameters (effective temperatures, surface gravities, metallicity and microturbulent velocity) and equivalent widths of stellar absorption lines. These samples of Ba stars are giants indicated by atmospheric parameters, metallicities and kinematic analysis about UVW velocity. Chemical abundances of 17 elements were obtained for these Ba stars. Their light elements (O, Na, Mg, Al, Si, Ca, Sc, Ti, V, Cr, Mn and Ni) are similar to the solar abundances. Our samples of Ba stars show obvious overabundances of neutron-capture (n-capture) process elements relative to the Sun. Their median abundances of [Ba/Fe], [La/Fe] and [Eu/Fe] are 0.54, 0.65 and 0.40, respectively. The YI and ZrI abundances are lower than Ba, La and Eu, but higher than the light elements for the strong Ba stars and similar to the iron-peak elements for the mild stars. There exists a positive correlation between Ba intensity and [Ba/Fe]. For the n-capture elements (Y, Zr, Ba, La), there is an anti-correlation between their [X/Fe] and [Fe/H]. We identify nine of our sample stars as strong Ba stars with [Ba/Fe]>0.6 where seven of them have Ba intensity Ba=2-5, one has Ba=1.5 and another one has Ba=1.0. The remaining ten stars are classified as mild Ba stars with 0.17<[Ba/Fe]<0.54

Circular quantum secret sharing

A circular quantum secret sharing protocol is proposed, which is useful and efficient when one of the parties of secret sharing is remote to the others who are in adjacent, especially the parties are more than three. We describe the process of this protocol and discuss its security when the quantum information carrying is polarized single photons running circularly. It will be shown that entanglement is not necessary for quantum secret sharing. Moreover, the theoretic efficiency is improved to approach 100% as almost all the instances can be used for generating the private key, and each photon can carry one bit of information without quantum storage. It is straightforwardly to utilize this topological structure to complete quantum secret sharing with multi-level two-particle entanglement in high capacity securely.Comment: 7 pages, 2 figure

Superconductor-Nanowire Devices from Tunneling to the Multichannel Regime: Zero-Bias Oscillations and Magnetoconductance Crossover

We present transport measurements in superconductor-nanowire devices with a gated constriction forming a quantum point contact. Zero-bias features in tunneling spectroscopy appear at finite magnetic fields, and oscillate in amplitude and split away from zero bias as a function of magnetic field and gate voltage. A crossover in magnetoconductance is observed: Magnetic fields above ~ 0.5 T enhance conductance in the low-conductance (tunneling) regime but suppress conductance in the high-conductance (multichannel) regime. We consider these results in the context of Majorana zero modes as well as alternatives, including Kondo effect and analogs of 0.7 structure in a disordered nanowire.Comment: Supplemental Material here: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/1742676/Churchill_Supplemental.pd