Subscribe to the gold package and get unlimited access to Shamra Academy
Register a new userA superconductor to superfluid phase transition in liquid metallic hydrogen
107
0
0.0
(
0
)
Ask ChatGPT about the research
No Arabic abstract
Although hydrogen is the simplest of atoms, it does not form the simplest of solids or liquids. Quantum effects in these phases are considerable (a consequence of the light proton mass) and they have a demonstrable and often puzzling influence on many physical properties, including spatial order. To date, the structure of dense hydrogen remains experimentally elusive. Recent studies of the melting curve of hydrogen indicate that at high (but experimentally accessible) pressures, compressed hydrogen will adopt a liquid state, even at low temperatures. In reaching this phase, hydrogen is also projected to pass through an insulator-to-metal transition. This raises the possibility of new state of matter: a near ground-state liquid metal, and its ordered states in the quantum domain. Ordered quantum fluids are traditionally categorized as superconductors or superfluids; these respective systems feature dissipationless electrical currents or mass flow. Here we report an analysis based on topological arguments of the projected phase of liquid metallic hydrogen, finding that it may represent a new type of ordered quantum fluid. Specifically, we show that liquid metallic hydrogen cannot be categorized exclusively as a superconductor or superfluid. We predict that, in the presence of a magnetic field, liquid metallic hydrogen will exhibit several phase transitions to ordered states, ranging from superconductors to superfluids.
rate research
Read More
The insulator-metal transition in hydrogen is one of the most outstanding problems in condensed matter physics. The high-pressure metallic phase is now predicted to be liquid atomic from T=0 K to very high temperatures. We have conducted measurements of optical properties of hot dense hydrogen in the region of 1.1-1.7 Mbar and up to 2200 K. We observe a first-order phase transition accompanied by changes in transmittance and reflectance characteristic of a metal. The phase line of this transition has a negative slope in agreement with theories of the so-called plasma phase transition.
The rich dynamics of flow between two weakly coupled macroscopic quantum reservoirs has led to a range of important technologies. Practical development has so far been limited to superconducting systems, for which the basic building block is the so-called superconducting Josephson weak link. With the recent observation of quantum oscillations in superfluid 4He near 2K, we can now envision analogous practical superfluid helium devices. The characteristic function which determines the dynamics of such systems is the current-phase relation Is(phi), which gives the relationship between the superfluid current Is flowing through a weak link and the quantum phase difference phi across it. Here we report the measurement of the current-phase relation of a superfluid 4He weak link formed by an array of nano-apertures separating two reservoirs of superfluid 4He. As we vary the coupling strength between the two reservoirs, we observe a transition from a strongly coupled regime in which Is(phi) is linear and flow is limited by 2pi phase slips, to a weak coupling regime where Is(phi) becomes the sinusoidal signature of a Josephson weak link.
We have investigated the dynamics of superfluid phase slippage in an array of apertures. The magnitude of the dissipative phase slips shows that they occur simultaneously in all the apertures when the temperature is around 10 mK below the superfluid transition, and subsequently lose their simultaneity as the temperature is lowered. We find that when periodic synchronous phase slippage occurs, the synchronicity exists from the very first phase slip, and therefore is not due to mode locking of interacting oscillators. When the system is allowed to relax freely from a given initial energy, the total number of phase slips that occur and the energy left in the system after the last phase slip depends reproducibly on the initial energy. We find the energy remaining after the final phase slip is a periodic function of the initial system energy. This dependence directly reveals the discrete and dissipative nature of the phase slips and is a powerful diagnostic for investigation of synchronicity in the array. When the array slips synchronously, this periodic energy function is a sharp sawtooth. As the temperature is lowered and the degree of synchronicity drops, the peak of this sawtooth becomes rounded, suggesting a broadening of the time interval over which the array slips. The underlying mechanism for the higher temperature synchronous behavior and the following loss of synchronicity at lower temperatures is not yet understood. We discuss the implications of our measurements and pose several questions that need to be resolved by a theory explaining the synchronous behavior in this quantum system. An understanding of the array phase slip process is essential to the optimization of superfluid `dc-SQUID gyroscopes and interferometers.
We present investigations of the superconductor to insulator transition (SIT) of uniform a-Bi films using a technique sensitive to Cooper pair phase coherence. The films are perforated with a nanohoneycomb array of holes to form a multiply connected geometry and subjected to a perpendicular magnetic field. Film magnetoresistances on the superconducting side of the SIT oscillate with a period dictated by the superconducting flux quantum and the areal hole density. The oscillations disappear close to the SIT critical point to leave a monotonically rising magnetoresistance that persists in the insulating phase. These observations indicate that the Cooper pair phase coherence length, which is infinite in the superconducting phase, collapses to a value less than the interhole spacing at this SIT. This behavior is inconsistent with the gradual reduction of the phase coherence length expected for a bosonic, phase fluctuation driven SIT. This result starkly contrasts with previous observations of oscillations persisting in the insulating phase of other films implying that there must be at least two distinct classes of disorder tuned SITs.
Among the mysteries surrounding unconventional, strongly correlated superconductors is the possibility of spatial variations in their superfluid density. We use atomic-resolution Josephson scanning tunneling microscopy to reveal a strongly inhomogeneous superfluid in the iron-based superconductor FeTe0.55Se0.45. By simultaneously measuring the topographic and electronic properties, we find that this inhomogeneity in the superfluid density is not caused by structural disorder or strong inter-pocket scattering, and does not correlate with variations in Cooper pair-breaking gap. Instead, we see a clear spatial correlation between superfluid density and quasiparticle strength, putting the iron-based superconductors on equal footing with the cuprates and demonstrating that locally, the quasiparticles are sharpest when the superconductivity is strongest. When repeated at different temperatures, our technique could further help elucidate what local and global mechanisms limit the critical temperature in unconventional superconductors.
Log in to be able to interact and post comments
comments
Fetching comments
Sign in to be able to follow your search criteria
