Researchers have discovered a 30-year-old mystery about how a uranium-based material acts as a superconductor – ScienceDaily

Using a very high pressure and a magnetic field, the team demonstrated that uranium-based material UBe₁₃ exhibits superconductivity triplet. It is a phenomenon in which the electrons form pairs in a parallel spin state. In conventional superconducting materials, opposite spin electrons pair together, effectively canceling the spins of others.

"Until now, there were very few definite examples of triplet superconductivity, although a number of superconductors have been discovered in various metal systems over the last century," says Shimizu Yusei. , scientist in materials at Tohoku University. "Our low-temperature pressure experiments provided strong evidence of superconductivity triplet spin in UBe₁₃. "

Materials that become superconductors, often at low temperatures, allow electricity to pass through virtually without resistance, minimizing energy losses during the process. This phenomenon, initially discovered in some pure metals, has been found in an astonishing variety of different systems. Of these, UBe₁₃ was one of the first "heavy fermion" superconductors discovered. The electrons of heavy fermion metal compounds appear to be 1000 times more massive than the electrons of ordinary metals.

With this new idea, scientists can now explain what is happening in the enigmatic uranium-based material UBe₁₃ At the atomic scale and how it acts as a spin-triplet superconductor in magnetic fields.

A team from the Grenoble Alpes University in France and Tohoku University in Japan measured the superconductivity of UBe₁₃ under various high pressures at very low temperatures. They found that the superconducting state in this material is successfully explained by a theoretical model in which electrons form so-called Cooper pairs with parallel spins.

This occurs as an "unconventional superconducting ground state" at ambient and high pressures of up to six gigapascals. By way of comparison, diamonds melt with the help of a high-energy laser at a pressure of 1.5 gigapascals. This particular superconducting state successfully explains the highly confusing nature of uranium-based triplet superconductors subjected to high magnetic fields.

Currently, superconductors require very low temperatures for optimal performance, so they are mainly used in magnetic resonance imaging machines and particle accelerators. Understanding how different materials conduct electricity at the atomic scale could give rise to a wider range of applications.

In addition to demonstrating triplet superconductivity, researchers note that UBe₁₃ could help answer more general questions. For example, the surface excitations of UBe₁₃ Physicists could perhaps observe theoretical particles called Majorana fermions, an exotic type of composite particle that is its own antiparticle and could revolutionize quantum computing in the future.

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