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Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz, Germany, have recently confirmed a record-setting transition temperature of 203 K (-70° C) into the superconducting state of a hydrogen-based compound when it is squeezed under extreme pressures of around 150 GPa, or nearly 1.5 million atmospheres [Nature 2015]. While this result represents the culmination of a long history of searching for ultra-high-temperature superconductivity in metallic hydrogen, first predicted by Neil Ashcroft, the experimental realization blows the top off an old myth that conventional phonon-based superconductivity would be limited to much lower temperatures.
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Two CNAM faculty members, Profs. Rick Green and Johnpierre Paglione, were invited to give presentations at the 11th International Conference on Materials and Mechanisms of Superconductivity (M2S), which took place in Geneva, Switzerland the week of August 23-28, 2015. Prof. Greene gave a keynote address entitled "Spin fluctuations and charge order in electron-doped cuprates", while Prof. Paglione gave an invited talk entitled "Topological RPdBi half-Heusler semimetals: a new family of non-centrosymmetric magnetic superconductors." This conference, which occurs once every three years, is considered the premier conference on the topic of superconductivity. This year, over 700 scientists from 42 countries participated in the event.
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CNAM members Johnpierre Paglione and Nicholas Butch contributed to a new text recently published by Wiley VCH (link). This text provides the first full overview and in-depth knowledge about the hot topic of topological insulators, covering techniques such as angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy, nuclear magnetic resonance, scanning-tunneling microscopy and current theoretical understanding of spin-locked electronic states, Dirac quasiparticles, quantum Hall effects and Majorana fermions. Together with a team of experts, Paglione and Butch provide a materials synthesis perspective chapter entitled "Growth and Characterization of Topological Insulators".
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Dr. Martha Greenblatt will give this week's CNAM Condensed Matter Colloquium. She is a distinguished researcher and professor at Rutgers University who has led the field of solid state chemistry especially in the areas of crystal growth, magnetoresistive oxides, superconductors, and other materials with highly correlated electronic behavior. Prof. Greenblatt has been a prolific researcher with more than 400 publications in materials chemistry. In 2003, she received the prestigious American Chemical Society’s Garvan-Olin Medal, which recognizes distinguished service to chemistry by women scientists. Prof. Greenblatt served as editor-in-chief for the Materials Research Bulletin, has served on various distinguished panels, and has been visiting scientist at a multitude of institutions such as Bell Laboratories, Oxford University, and the Weismann Institute of Science.
Hosted by Efrain Rodriguez and Johnpierre Paglione
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This year's Carr Lecturer is Prof. Carlo Beenaker, professor of theoretical physics at Leiden University and leader of the university's mesoscopic physics group, established in 1992. Professor Beenakker is one of the absolute top international experts on mesoscopic physics. He has an exceptionally long list of scientific analyses, inventions and discoveries to his name, including mesoscopy in superconducting metal structures, quantization of conductivity, edge channels and contributions to random matrix theory. He also made a substantial contribution to establishing the basic concepts of single-electron tunnelling, Coulomb Blockade and noise in mesoscopic systems, and to transport theory of the Quantum Hall effect.
The schedule for Prof. Beenaker's seminars includes the Tuesday Physics Department Colloquium (4pm), a Wednesday CMTC seminar (11am) and the Thursday CNAM Condensed Matter Colloquium (2pm) -- information can be found here.
