Los Alamos National Laboratory sits on top of a once-remote mesa in northern New Mexico with the Jemez mountains as a backdrop to research and innovation covering multi-disciplines from bioscience, sustainable energy sources, to plasma physics and new materials.
The remarkable breakthrough helps validate theory behind the observed increase in specific heat of the material. Researchers unravel 25-year-old physics mystery LOS ALAMOS, New Mexico, June 3, 2010—Unconventional use of a well-known scientific instrument has helped scientists from Los Alamos National Laboratory, Brookhaven National Laboratory, and other institutions unravel a 25-year-old physics mystery and reveal a "hidden order” of the electronic structure inside an unusual superconducting material. In a paper released today in Nature, Alexander Balatsky of Los Alamos' Theoretical Division, Séamus Davis of Brookhaven National Laboratory, and Graeme Luke of McMaster University (Ontario, Canada) describe the use of spectroscopic imaging scanning tunneling microscopy to view the "hidden order” of electrons within uranium ruthenium silicate as it is cooled to very low temperatures. The research could lead to engineered materials that exhibit superconductivity by helping physicists better understand the behavior of heavy fermion materials—exotic compounds whose slow-moving electrons behave as if they have a mass 1,000 times greater than ordinary free electrons. Since 1984, just prior to the cusp of discovery of high-temperature superconducting materials, scientists studying the behavior of heavy fermion materials noticed that as the superconducting material uranium ruthenium silicate was cooled to temperatures below 55 degrees Kelvin (minus 360 degrees Fahrenheit), its specific heat increased.
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