The unique electronic structure found at interfaces between materials can allow unconventional quantum states to emerge. Here we report on the discovery of superconductivity in electron gases formed at interfaces between (111) oriented KTaO3 and insulating overlayers of either EuO or LaAlO3. The superconducting transition temperature, approaching 2.2 K, is about one order of magnitude higher than that of the LaAlO3/SrTiO3 system. Strikingly, similar electron gases at KTaO3 (001) interfaces remain normal down to 25 mK. The critical field and current-voltage measurements indicate that the superconductivity is two dimensional. In EuO/KTaO3 (111) samples, a spontaneous in-plane transport anisotropy is observed prior to the onset of superconductivity, suggesting the emergence of a distinct ‘stripe’ like phase, which is also revealed near the critical field.

Amongst the rare-earth perovskite nickelates, LaNiO 3 (LNO) is an exception. While the former have insulating and antiferromagnetic ground states, LNO remains metallic and non-magnetic down to the lowest temperatures. It is believed that LNO is a strange metal, on the verge of an antiferromagnetic instability. Our work suggests that LNO is a quantum critical metal, close to an antiferromagnetic quantum critical point (QCP). The QCP behavior in LNO is manifested in epitaxial thin films with unprecedented high purities. We find that the temperature and magnetic field dependences of the resistivity of LNO at low temperatures are consistent with scatterings of charge carriers from weak disorder and quantum fluctuations of an antiferromagnetic nature. Furthermore, we find that the introduction of a small concentration of magnetic impurities qualitatively changes the magnetotransport properties of LNO, resembling that found in some heavy-fermion Kondo lattice systems in the vicinity of an antiferromagnetic QCP.

Perpendicular-to-the-plane magnetic field tuned re-entrant superconductivity in out-ofequilibrium, quasi-one dimensional (quasi-1D) planar nanowires is a novel, counterintuitive phenomenon. It was not until recently that a microscopic mechanism explaining the phenomenon as arising from the coexistence of superconductivity with phase-slip driven dissipation was developed. Here we present new results on re-entrance phenomena in quasi-1D aluminum nanowires with inplane magnetic fields, transverse and longitudinal to the nanowire axis. The response to in-plane transverse magnetic fields in this geometry is qualitatively different from that previously reported for perpendicular-to-the-plane field experiments and for in-plane longitudinal field studies. The new feature in the data is an abrupt return to the superconducting state with increasing field at values of field corresponding to a single flux quantum for a short wire and a fractional flux quantum for a long wire. Since these findings are dramatically different from those involving perpendicular-to-the-plane magnetic fields, a different mechanism, as yet unidentified, may be at work.

We examine the DC and radio frequency (RF) response of superconducting transmission line resonators comprised of very thin NbTiN films, [Formula: see text] in thickness, in the high-temperature limit, where the photon energy is less than the thermal energy. The resonant frequencies of these superconducting resonators show a significant nonlinear response as a function of RF input power, which can approach a frequency shift of [Formula: see text] in a [Formula: see text] span in the thinnest film. The strong nonlinear response allows these very thin film resonators to serve as high kinetic inductance parametric amplifiers.

Measurements of the current-voltage (I–V) characteristics of ionic liquid gated nanometer scale channels of strontium titanate have been carried out. At low gate voltages, the I–V characteristics exhibit a large voltage threshold for conduction and a nonlinear power law behavior at all temperatures measured. The source-drain current of these nanowires scales as a power law of the difference between the source-drain voltage and the threshold voltage. The scaling behavior of the I–V characteristic is reminiscent of collective electronic transport through an array of quantum dots. At large gate voltages, the narrow channel acts as a quasi-1D wire whose conductance follows Landauer's formula for multichannel transport.

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