What stabilizes unconventional superconductivity?
Understanding the mechanism behind unconventional superconductivity remains one of the grand challenges facing modern physics. We will address this challenge by measuring the electronic and magnetic properties – Fermi surfaces and exchange interactions – of a variety of materials in high magnetic fields. The project will shed light on the uneasy, but intimate relationship between magnetic order and superconductivity. In particular it will focus on materials that sit on the verge of being either magnets or superconductors. By applying high magnetic fields and high applied pressures we can begin understand exactly what it is that tips the balance and causes the material to choose one state over the other. Much of the work will be performed in the Nicholas Kurti Magnetic Field Laboratory, an experimental facility located within the Oxford Physics Department. This is the only place in the UK which can produce magnetic fields high enough to make these experiments possible. (Figure: Quasipar
