Heavy electrons with extremely strong Coulomb repulsions can condense into a fully gapped s-wave superconducting state.

There is growing evidence that the superconducting semimetal FeSe (Tc ∼ 8 K) is in the crossover regime between weak-coupling Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) and strong-coupling Bose-Einsteincondensate (BEC) limits. We report on longitudinal and transverse thermal conductivities, κxx and κxy, respectively, in magnetic fields up to 20 T. The field dependences of κxx and κxy imply that a highly anisotropic small superconducting gap forms at the electron Fermi-surface pocket whereas a more isotropic and larger gap forms at the hole pocket. Below ∼ 1.0 K, both κxx and κxy exhibit distinct anomalies (kinks) at the upper critical field Hc2 and at a field H * slightly below Hc2. The analysis of the thermal Hall angle (κxy/κxx) indicates a change of the quasiparticle scattering rate at H * . These results provide strong support to the previous suggestion that above H * a distinct field-induced superconducting phase emerges with an unprecedented large spin imbalance.

We have investigated the roles of interfacial reaction, work function variation, and localized states of annealed Ti/Al ohmic contacts to p-type 4H-SiC. The Al was found to be absent in the near interface region. The possibility of additional p-doping by Al indiffusion in the top SiC layer was ruled out. The work function of Ti 3 SiC 2 , the direct contact layer to SiC, was determined to be intermediate between Ti and p-SiC, leading to a considerably lowered Schottky barrier height. Reaction-induced interfacial states were observed in the near-interface SiC, which may further reduce the barrier height and cause the formation of ohmic contact.

Quantum spin liquid (QSL) is an exotic quantum phase of matter whose ground state is quantum-mechanically entangled without any magnetic ordering. A central issue concerns emergent excitations that characterize QSLs, which are hypothetically associated with quasiparticle fractionalization and topological order. Here we report highly unusual heat conduction generated by the spin degrees of freedom in a QSL state of the pyrochlore magnet Pr 2 Zr 2 O 7 , which hosts spin-ice correlations with strong quantum fluctuations. The thermal conductivity in high temperature regime exhibits a two-gap behavior, which is consistent with the gapped excitations of magnetic (M-) and electric monopoles (E-particles). At very low temperatures below 200 mK, the thermal conductivity unexpectedly shows a dramatic enhancement, which well exceeds purely phononic conductivity, demonstrating the presence of highly mobile spin excitations. This new type of excitations can be attributed to emergent photons (ν-particle), coherent gapless spin excitations in a spin-ice manifold.

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