[Report] Emergence of superconductivity in the canonical heavy-electron metal YbRh2Si2

Friday, January 29, 2016 - 09:53 in Physics & Chemistry

The smooth disappearance of antiferromagnetic order in strongly correlated metals commonly furnishes the development of unconventional superconductivity. The canonical heavy-electron compound YbRh2Si2 seems to represent an apparent exception from this quantum critical paradigm in that it is not a superconductor at temperature T ≥ 10 millikelvin (mK). Here we report magnetic and calorimetric measurements on YbRh2Si2, down to temperatures as low as T ≈ 1 mK. The data reveal the development of nuclear antiferromagnetic order slightly above 2 mK and of heavy-electron superconductivity almost concomitantly with this order. Our results demonstrate that superconductivity in the vicinity of quantum criticality is a general phenomenon. Authors: Erwin Schuberth, Marc Tippmann, Lucia Steinke, Stefan Lausberg, Alexander Steppke, Manuel Brando, Cornelius Krellner, Christoph Geibel, Rong Yu, Qimiao Si, Frank Steglich

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