Among the materials with remarkable electronic and magnetic properties, few are more extraordinary than superconductors. When a superconductor is placed in a magnetic field, it is threaded by swirling whirlpools of electric current known as vortices which can serve as a unique probe into the nature of the superconducting state in the host material. It now appears that some of the most significant advances in superconductivity will be precisely in those materials which are the most complex to understand and control.
In a recent paper published in Physical Review Letters, Notre Dame graduate student Pinaki Das and Associate Professor Morten Ring Eskildsen report results of their latest small-angle neutron scattering studies of the vortex lattice studies in the heavy fermion superconductor CeCoIn5. In particular they investigated the detailed interplay between superconductivity and magnetism in this material, which show very strong Pauli paramagnetic effects on the vortex cores. Studies of Pauli paramagnetic effects in superconductors were been pioneered by the Eskildsen group. The present results were obtained in collaboration with colleagues at University of Birmingham (UK), the Paul Scherrer Institute (Switzerland), University of Montreal (Canada), Brookhaven National Laboratory and Los Alamos National Laboratory.
The abstract and the link to the full article,"Vortex Lattice Studies in CeCoIn5 with H⊥c," can be found at http://prl.aps.org/abstract/PRL/v108/i8/e087002.