(Press-News.org) LOS ALAMOS, N.M., April 19, 2021 -- A recent series of experiments at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory (National MagLab) at Los Alamos National Laboratory leveraged some of the nation's highest-powered nondestructive magnets to reveal an exotic new phase of matter at high magnetic fields. The experiments studied the unusual Kondo insulator ytterbium dodecaboride (or YbB12) and were the first results from the new 75-tesla duplex magnet housed at the National MagLab's Pulsed Field Facility at Los Alamos.
"This magnet and the resulting experiments are the first fruits of the National Science Foundation-supported pulsed magnet surge," said Michael Rabin, director of the Pulsed Field Facility at Los Alamos. "The surge is creating new science capabilities in the 75-85 tesla range -- leading eventually to an expanded portfolio of some of the most powerful nondestructive magnetic fields in the world."
Researchers from the University of Michigan, Kyoto University and Los Alamos conducted the research, published last week in Nature Physics.
In Kondo insulators, there is an unusual quantum-mechanical mixing of mobile electrons and magnetic atoms, making these materials attractive as model systems for basic science, electronic devices, and possibly quantum computing. Unlike simple metals and insulators, YbB12 exhibits properties of both -- its electrical resistance behaves like that of an insulator, but it also clearly shows quantum oscillations at high magnetic fields that are a fundamental metallic property.
"A plethora of theories has emerged to account for such behavior," said John Singleton, a fellow at the MagLab's Los Alamos campus and co-author on the paper. "Some physicists believe this is a condensed-matter incarnation of neutral Majorana fermions, entities normally explored in particle physics."
To test these theories, the research team wanted to observe how the neutral fermions that they found in YbB12 responded to extreme conditions. The high magnetic fields in the new 75-tesla duplex magnet available at the National MagLab's Pulsed Field Facility were used to suppress the insulating properties of YbB12 and measure quantum oscillations and various properties that are affected by the presence of the neutral fermions.
"The extra 10 tesla above our standard pulsed magnets provided by the duplex magnet enabled this new state of matter -- exotic fermions gradually being drowned in a sea of normal electrons -- to be tracked across a wide range of magnetic fields for the first time," said Singleton. This confirmed that the phenomena observed were definitely associated with the neutral fermions and provided a test of the various theoretical models.
The duplex magnet is a result of a Pulsed Field Facility "magnet surge" supported by the National Science Foundation. The purpose of the surge is to create new and expanded science capabilities in the 75-85 tesla range. The duplex magnet system is available to researchers from around the world to conduct their own experiments, and an 85-tesla duplex magnet and necessary supporting technology are under development.
These new pulsed magnets are powered solely by capacitor banks without relying on the Los Alamos generator that powers the much larger 100 tesla magnet. The generator is currently offline for repairs and maintenance, so magnets from the surge fill an important gap for condensed-matter physics in high magnetic fields.
The new magnets are called duplex magnets because they are made from two concentric electromagnet coils (solenoids) that are powered independently from separate capacitor-bank modules. When the generator is back online, technology developed by the pulsed magnet surge will be combined with Los Alamos' largest magnets to further expand the MagLab's science capabilities.
INFORMATION:
The National MagLab is the world's largest and highest-powered magnet facility with sites at Florida State University, the University of Florida and Los Alamos National Laboratory. Los Alamos National Lab hosts the Pulsed Field Facility, home to a 100-tesla magnet system that has held a world record for nondestructive magnetic field production since 2012. The MagLab is funded by the National Science Foundation (DMR-1644779), the State of Florida and the US Department of Energy. High magnetic field magnets are essential to understanding physics phenomena that range from high-temperature superconductivity to quantum matter.
Paper: Xiang, Z., Chen, L., Chen, KW. et al. Unusual high-field metal in a Kondo insulator. Nature Physics. (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-021-01216-0
About Los Alamos National Laboratory
Los Alamos National Laboratory, a multidisciplinary research institution engaged in strategic science on behalf of national security, is managed by Triad, a public service oriented, national security science organization equally owned by its three founding members: Battelle Memorial Institute (Battelle), the Texas A&M University System (TAMUS), and the Regents of the University of California (UC) for the Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration.
Los Alamos enhances national security by ensuring the safety and reliability of the U.S. nuclear stockpile, developing technologies to reduce threats from weapons of mass destruction, and solving problems related to energy, environment, infrastructure, health, and global security concerns.
LA-UR-21-23511
Radiation at terahertz frequencies (wavelengths between 0.03 and 0.3 mm) can be used successfully to analyze the structural dynamics of water and biomolecules. But applying the technique to aqueous solutions and tissues remains challenging, since terahertz (THz) radiation is strongly absorbed by water. While this absorption enables certain analyses, such as the structure of water and its interactions with biological solutes, it limits the thickness of samples that can be analyzed, and it drowns out weaker signals from biomolecules of interest. Strong absorption of THz ...
CORVALLIS, Ore. - Four decades after their capture more than a half-mile below the ocean's surface, three snailfish species have received their scientific names, two of them from school children on Guam in the island's native Chamorro language.
The rare specimens of liparids were collected in the early 1980s in traps set in the Mariana Archipelago in the western Pacific Ocean, deposited with NOAA's Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center in Hawaii and did not get examined until recently, when they were noticed during the center's move to a new location. ...
As the back-to-school rush begins, podiatry experts at the University of South Australia are encouraging parents to get their children's school shoes professionally fitted, as new research confirms that ill-fitted footwear can significantly impede foot movement and comfort.
In a new study, researchers tested the effect of shoe size on foot motion and comfort among children aged 8 to 12 years, finding that shoes that were one size too small restricted the normal movement of the heel, arch and big toe joint during walking.
The study also confirmed that a comfortable shoe fit can be determined by a 'rule of thumb', where the wearer's thumb width from their longest toe to the end of their shoe is an effective and accurate measure ...
Metals are one of the most widely used materials in the world - they are used in cookware, tools, electric appliances, electric wires, computer chips, jewelry and so on. With the growing demand for metal products, it is crucial to promote sustainable and environmentally-friendly methods of recycling metal waste to help reduce the environmental impact of using metals in the economy.
The conventional approaches for recycling metal waste are energy intensive and some of these methods also generate environmentally harmful by-products, such as ammonia and methane during aluminium recycling.
To address this challenge, a team of researchers from the National ...
With inherent orthogonality, both SAMs and OAMs of light have been utilized to expand the dimensions of optical communications and signal processing, wherein unambiguous SAM and OAM identification is one of the significant topics. Conventional sorting approaches suffer from complicated optical setups, multiple bulky devices, repeated projection measurements, and cannot simultaneously distinguish SAM and OAM.
In a new paper published in Light Science & Application, a team of scientists, led by Professor Xiangang Luo from State Key Laboratory of Optical Technologies on Nano-Fabrication and Micro-Engineering, Institute of Optics and Electronics Chinese Academy of Sciences, and co-workers have showed that a single spin-decoupled metasurface that merges the geometric ...
Hand, Foot & Mouth Disease (HFMD) is a generally mild, contagious viral infection common in young children. In Singapore, HFMD is endemic and is most commonly caused by intestinal viruses known as coxsackieviruses and enteroviruses.
While most HFMD patients experience common symptoms such as sore throat, fever, ulcers inside the mouth and blisters and lesions on the palms and soles, infection with Enterovirus-A71 (EV-A71) may lead to serious neurological complications that can be potentially fatal or lead to long-term neurological deficits (cognitive and motor deficits). These complicated HFMD cases are mainly seen in young children.
Researchers from NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine's Infectious Diseases ...
New FLEET research confirms the potential for topological materials to substantially reduce the energy consumed by computing.
The collaboration of FLEET researchers from University of Wollongong, Monash University and UNSW have shown in a theoretical study that using topological insulators rather than conventional semiconductors to make transistors could reduce the gate voltage by half, and the energy used by each transistor by a factor of four.
To accomplish this, they had to find a way to overcome the famous 'Boltzmann's tyranny' that puts a lower limit on transistor switching energy.
They found a surprising result: gate voltage applied to a topological insulator could create a barrier to electron flow larger than the voltage itself times the electron charge, ...
Chronic pain is among the most common chronic conditions in the United States, but estimates of its prevalence and impact vary widely. In 2019, the National Center for Health Statistics of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention added a new set of questions relating to pain to its National Health Interview Survey (NHIS), a large household-based annual survey that offers valuable insights into the health statuses of U.S. adults nationwide. In an article published in Pain, researchers from Brigham and Women's Hospital and Mass Eye and Ear report that 50.2 million (20.5 percent) ...
Durham, NC - A phase 2 clinical trial whose results were released today in STEM CELLS Translational Medicine might point to a way to overcome bronchopulmonary dysplasia (BPD), a major cause of death in preterm infants. The study, conducted by researchers at Samsung Medical Center, Sungkyunkwan University and Asan Medical Center Children's Hospital in Seoul, evaluates the effectiveness of treating these infants by transplanting umbilical cord blood-derived mesenchymal stem cells (UCB-MSCs) directly into their tracheas.
Early results showed signs of improvement for the most immature infants included in the trial.
BPD is a serious breathing disorder in which the lungs do not develop normally. Most infants who develop BPD are born more than ...
Embargoed press materials are now available for the virtual Experimental Biology (EB) 2021 meeting, featuring cutting-edge multidisciplinary research from across the life sciences. EB 2021, to be held April 27-30, is the annual meeting of five scientific societies bringing together thousands of scientists and 25 guest societies in one interdisciplinary community.
Complete a Press Registration Form for complimentary meeting registration and full access to our virtual newsroom. We encourage advance registration as it may take up to a day to receive access.
Join Our Virtual Press Conference
Reporters are invited to join a live Q&A discussion of selected research announcements during a virtual EB press conference held ...
