Using solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance (ssNMR) techniques, scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Ames Laboratory discovered a new quantum criticality in a superconducting material, leading to a greater understanding of the link between magnetism and unconventional superconductivity.
Most iron-arsenide superconductors display both magnetic and structural (or nematic) transitions, making it difficult to understand the role they play in superconducting states. But a compound of calcium, potassium, iron, and arsenic, and doped with small amounts of nickel, CaK(Fe1−xNix)4As4, first made at Ames Laboratory, has been discovered to exhibit a new magnetic state called a hedgehog spin-vortex crystal anti-ferromagnetic state without nematic transitions.
Furukawa's discovery was a collaboration between Ames Laboratory's world-leading SSNMR team and the lab's condensed matter physicists, including Paul Canfield, a senior scientist at Ames Laboratory and a Distinguished Professor and the Robert Allen Wright Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Iowa State University.
The research is further discussed in the paper, "Hedgehog Spin-vortex Crystal Anti-ferromagnetic Quantum Criticality in CaK(Fe1−xNix)4As4 revealed by NMR," published in Physical Review Letters.
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