Regensburg 2016 – scientific programme

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TT: Fachverband Tiefe Temperaturen

TT 19: Superconductivity: Poster Session

TT 19.1: Poster

Monday, March 7, 2016, 15:00–18:00, Poster D

Superconductivity in the high-pressure phase of bismuth — •Philip A. C. Brown, Konstantin Semeniuk, and F. Malte Grosche — Department of Physics, Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge, UK

At pressures above 27 kbar, elemental bismuth adopts a highly unusual incommensurate host-guest structure. This structure combines two distinct, interpenetrating crystal lattices and consequently lacks discrete translational symmetry. Although similar high pressure structures have been observed in other elements, their electronic properties have not been investigated in detail. The moderate pressure required to induce the host-guest phase in bismuth presents a favourable opportunity for comprehensive electrical transport studies.

The high-pressure host-guest phase of bismuth, termed Bi-III, is known to be superconducting with a transition temperature of around 7 K, but the details of its superconducting and normal state properties are comparatively little explored. We report resistivity and magnetisation measurements in the Bi-III phase in fields up to 9 T and temperatures down to 120 mK. We find evidence for a strikingly high critical field and an unusual temperature dependence of the resistivity above the superconducting transition. We discuss our findings in the context of theoretical descriptions of host-guest materials.