"Cold Melting" of Invar Alloys

An anomalously strong volume magnetostriction in Invars may lead to a situation when at low temperatures the dislocation free energy becomes negative and a multiple generation of dislocations becomes possible. This generation induces a first order phase transition from the FCC crystalline to an amorphous state, and may be called "cold melting". The possibility of the cold melting in Invars is connected with the fact that the exchange energy contribution into the dislocation self energy in Invars is strongly enhanced, as compared to conventional ferromagnetics, due to anomalously strong volume magnetostriction. The possible candidate, where this effect can be observed, is a FePt disordered Invar alloy in which the volume magnetostriction is especially large

Rough Surface Effect on Meissner Diamagnetism in Normal-layer of N-S Proximity-Contact System

Rough surface effect on the Meissner diamagnetic current in the normal layer of proximity contact N-S bi-layer is investigated in the clean limit. The diamagnetic current and the screening length are calculated by use of quasi-classical Green's function. We show that the surface roughness has a sizable effect, even when a normal layer width is large compared with the coherence length $\xi =v_{\rm F}/\pi T_{\rm c}$. The effect is as large as that of the impurity scattering and also as that of the finite reflection at the N-S interface.Comment: 12 pages, 3 figures. To be published in J. Phys. Soc. Jpn. Vol.71-

Crystalline-Electric-Field Effect on the Resistivity of Ce-based Heavy Fermion Systems

The behavior of the resistivity of Ce-based heavy fermion systems is studied using a 1/$N$-expansion method a la Nagoya, where $N$ is the spin-orbital degeneracy of f-electrons. The 1/$N$-expansion is performed in terms of the auxiliary particles, and a strict requirement of the local constraints is fulfilled for each order of 1/N. The physical quantities can be calculated over the entire temperature range by solving the coupled Dyson equations for the Green functions self-consistently at each temperature. This 1/N-expansion method is known to provide asymptotically exact results for the behavior of physical quantities in both low- and high-energy regions when it is applied to a single orbital periodic Anderson model (PAM). On the basis of a generalized PAM including crystalline-electric-field splitting with a single conduction band, the pressure dependence of the resistivity is calculated by parameterizing the effect of pressure as the variation of the hybridization parameter between the conduction electrons and f-electrons. The main result of the present study is that the double-peak structure of the $T$-dependence of the resistivity is shown to merge into a single-peak structure with increasing pressure.Comment: 37 pages, 22 figure

Depleted Kondo Lattices

We consider a two dimensional Kondo lattice model with exchange J and hopping t in which three out of four impurity spins are removed in a regular way. At the particle-hole symmetric point the model may be studied with auxiliary field quantum Monte Carlo methods without sign problems. To achieve the relevant energy scales on finite clusters, we introduce a simple method to reduce size effects by up to an order of magnitude in temperature. In this model, a metallic phase survives up to arbitrarily low temperatures before being disrupted by magnetic fluctuations which open a gap in the charge sector. We study the formation of the heavy-electron state with emphasis on a crossover scale T* defined by the maximum in the resistivity versus temperature curve. The behavior of thermodynamic properties such as specific heat as well as spin and charge uniform susceptibilities are studied as the temperature varies in a wide range across T*. Within our accuracy T* compares well to the Kondo scale of the related single impurity problem. Finally our QMC resuls are compared with mean-field approximations.Comment: 12 pages, 13 figures. Submitted to Phys. Rev.

Josephson current in s-wave superconductor / Sr_2RuO_4 junctions

The Josephson current between an s-wave and a spin-triplet superconductor Sr$_2$RuO$_4$ (SRO) is studied theoretically. In spin-singlet / spin-triplet superconductor junctions, there is no Josephson current proportional to $\sin \phi$ in the absence of the spin-flip scattering near junction interfaces, where $\phi$ is a phase-difference across junctions. Thus a dominant term of the Josephson current is proportional to $\sin 2\phi$ . The spin-orbit scattering at the interfaces gives rise to the Josephson current proportional to $\cos\phi$, which is a direct consequence of the chiral paring symmetry in SRO

Enhancement of magnetic coercivity and macroscopic quantum tunneling in monodispersed Co/CoO cluster assemblies

Magnetic properties have been measured for monodisperse-sized Co/CoO cluster assemblies prepared by a plasma-gas-condensation-type cluster beam deposition technique. The clear correlation obtained between exchange bias field and coercivity suggests the enhancement of uniaxial anisotropy owing to the exchange coupling between the ferromagnetic Co core and antiferromagnetic CoO shell, and magnetic disorder at the core-shell interface. A nonthermal magnetic relaxation observed below 8 K, being referred to as macroscopic quantum tunneling of the magnetization, is ascribed to the enhanced uniaxial anisotropy.journal articl

Quasiclassical description of transport through superconducting contacts

We present a theoretical study of transport properties through superconducting contacts based on a new formulation of boundary conditions that mimics interfaces for the quasiclassical theory of superconductivity. These boundary conditions are based on a description of an interface in terms of a simple Hamiltonian. We show how this Hamiltonian description is incorporated into quasiclassical theory via a T-matrix equation by integrating out irrelevant energy scales right at the onset. The resulting boundary conditions reproduce results obtained by conventional quasiclassical boundary conditions, or by boundary conditions based on the scattering approach. This formalism is well suited for the analysis of magnetically active interfaces as well as for calculating time-dependent properties such as the current-voltage characteristics or as current fluctuations in junctions with arbitrary transmission and bias voltage. This approach is illustrated with the calculation of Josephson currents through a variety of superconducting junctions ranging from conventional to d-wave superconductors, and to the analysis of supercurrent through a ferromagnetic nanoparticle. The calculation of the current-voltage characteristics and of noise is applied to the case of a contact between two d-wave superconductors. In particular, we discuss the use of shot noise for the measurement of charge transferred in a multiple Andreev reflection in d-wave superconductors

Structure and magnetic properties of Co/CoO and Co/Si core-shell cluster assemblies prepared via gas-phase

Plasma-gas condensation cluster deposition systems have been introduced and applied for preparation of Co/CoO and Co/Si clusters assemblies. In Co/CoO cluster assemblies prepared by the single source PGC system with introduction of O-2 gas into the deposition chamber, fee Co cores are covered with NaCl type CoO shells, showing marked enhancement of unidirectional and uniaxial magnetic anisotropy and a clear cross-over phenomenon in the magnetic relaxation from the high temperature thermal regime to the low temperature quantum tunneling regime. In Co/Si cluster assemblies prepared by the double source PGC system, fee Co cores are also covered with amorphous Si rich shells, showing rather small magnetic coercivity. Since Co/CoO and Co/Si core-shell clusters are stable in ambient atmosphere, they will be used as building blocks for novel nano-structure-controlled materials. (c) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

Spin-glass behavior in mechanically milled crystalline GdN

Concentrated spin-glass behavior is discovered in a mechanically milled crystalline compound GdN. We report on measurements of magnetic relaxation and both ac and dc magnetic susceptibility at temperatures between 2 and 300 K in a magnetic field up to 5 T. Both ac and dc magnetic susceptibility measurements show a peak at freezing temperatures Tf that strongly depends on the frequency and amplitude of the applied magnetic field. The magnetic relaxation measurement shows a slow decay of the remanent magnetization with time below Tf , which is well described by an exponential function in a long time scale and a reciprocal proportion function in a short time scale. The results strongly suggest that spin-glass behaviors exist in mechanically milled crystalline compound GdN with the magnetic element as high as 50 at. %.application/pdfjournal articl