American and German physicists have discovered a potentially new state of non-standard superconducting matter in a strong magnetic field. The corresponding study was published in the journal Nature, briefly reported by the Los Alamos National Laboratory (USA).
In a superconductor with heavy fermions CeRhIn5, placed in a strong magnetic field (with an induction of 50 Tesla), a nematic state was observed in which the electrons were arranged in such a way as to reduce the symmetry of the initial crystal. Nonstandard superconductivity arose near the interface between the magnetically ordered and magnetically disordered phases.
Experts believe that the non-standard behavior observed in superconductors with heavy fermions is associated with the appearance of a nematic state in the latter, which is characteristic of liquid crystals.
The source of the pulsed magnetic field, with the help of which physicists observed a new state of matter, was located in the United States; specialists from Germany prepared a focused ion beam for it.
Heavy fermion superconductors are compounds of rare earth metals and actinides with an unstable 4f or 5f shell. Due to the latter circumstance, anomalous pairing of electrons is realized in such systems, which ultimately decreases, in comparison with classical superconductors, the symmetry properties of the material.
Superconductivity is widely used, in particular, in magnetic resonance imaging and particle accelerators, as well as in radio frequency and microwave filters.