We investigate the specific heat of ultra-pure single crystals of Sr2RuO4, a leading candidate of a spin-triplet superconductor. We for the first time obtained specific-heat evidence of the first-order superconducting transition below 0.8 K, namely d
ivergent-like peaks and clear hysteresis in the specific heat at the upper critical field. The first-order transition occurs for all in-plane field directions. The specific-heat features for the first-order transition are found to be highly sensitive to sample quality; in particular, the hysteresis becomes totally absent in a sample with slightly lower quality. These thermodynamic observations provide crucial bases to understand the unconventional pair-breaking effect responsible for the first-order transition.
We report normal-state transport properties of the single-crystalline samples of the silver-lead oxide superconductor Ag5Pb2O6, including the electrical resistivity, magnetoresistance, and Hall coefficient. From the Hall coefficient measurement, we c
onfirmed that the carrier density of this oxide is as low as 5x10^{21} cm^{-3}, one order of magnitude smaller than those for ordinary alkali metals and noble metals. The magnetoresistance behavior is well characterized by the axial symmetry of the Fermi surface and by a single relaxation time. The T^2 term of the resistivity is scaled with the specific heat coefficient, based on the recent theory for the electron-electron scattering. The present results provide evidence that Ag5Pb2O6 is a low-carrier-density three-dimensional electron-gas-like system with enhanced electron-electron scatterings.
By means of the magnetocaloric effect, we examine the nature of the superconducting-normal (S-N) transition of Sr2RuO4, a most promising candidate for a spin-triplet superconductor. We provide thermodynamic evidence that the S-N transition of this ox
ide is of first order below approximately 0.8 K and only for magnetic field directions very close to the conducting plane, in clear contrast to the ordinary type-II superconductors exhibiting second-order S-N transitions. The entropy release across the transition at 0.2 K is 10% of the normal-state entropy. Our result urges an introduction of a new mechanism to break superconductivity by magnetic field.
We report the magnetic field-amplitude and field-angle dependence of the superconducting onset temperature Tc_onset of the organic superconductor (TMTSF)2ClO4 in magnetic fields H accurately aligned to the conductive ab plane. We revealed that the ra
pid increase of the onset fields at low temperatures occurs both for H // b and H // a, irrespective of the carrier confinement. Moreover, in the vicinity of the Pauli limiting field, we report a shift of a principal axis of the in-plane field-angle dependence of Tc_onset away from the b axis. This feature may be related to an occurrence of Fulde-Ferrell-Larkin-Ovchinnikov phases.
