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The discovery of nanostructured forms of molecular carbon has led to renewed interest in the varied properties of this element. Both graphite and C60 can be electron-doped by alkali metals to become superconducting; transition temperatures of up to 52 K have been attained by field-induced hole-doping of C60 (ref. 2). Recent experiments and theoretical studies have suggested that electronic instabilities in pure graphite may give rise to superconducting and ferromagnetic properties, even at room temperature. Here we report the serendipitous discovery of strong magnetic signals in rhombohedral C60. Our intention was to search for superconductivity in polymerized C60; however, it appears that our high-pressure, high-temperature polymerization process results in a magnetically ordered state. The material exhibits features typical of ferromagnets: saturation magnetization, large hysteresis and attachment to a magnet at room temperature. The temperature dependences of the saturation and remanent magnetization indicate a Curie temperature near 500 K.

We have studied the magnetization of various, well characterized samples of highly oriented pyrolitic graphite (HOPG), Kish graphite and natural graphite to investigate the recently reported ferromagnetic-like signal and its possible relation to ferromagnetic impurities. The magnetization results obtained for HOPG samples for applied fields parallel to the graphene layers -to minimize the diamagnetic background -show no correlation with the magnetic impurity concentration. Our overall results suggest an intrinsic origin for the ferromagnetism found in graphite. We discuss possible origins of the ferromagnetic signal.

The quantum de Haas-van Alphen (dHvA) and Shubnikov-de Haas oscillations measured in graphite were decomposed by pass-band filtering onto contributions from three different groups of carriers. Generalizing the theory of dHvA oscillations for 2D carriers with an arbitrary spectrum and by detecting the oscillation frequencies using a method of two-dimensional phase-frequency analysis which we developed, we identified these carriers as (i) minority holes having a 2D parabolic massive spectrum p(2)(perpendicular)/2m(perpendicular), (ii) massive majority electrons with a 3D spectrum and (iii) majority holes with a 2D Dirac-like spectrum +/-vp(perpendicular) which seems to be responsible for the unusual strongly-correlated electronic phenomena in graphite.

Magnetotransport measurements performed on several well-characterized highly oriented pyrolitic graphite and single crystalline Kish graphite samples reveal a reentrant metallic behavior in the basal-plane resistance at high magnetic fields, when only the lowest Landau levels are occupied. The results suggest that the quantum Hall effect and Landau-level-quantization-induced superconducting correlations are relevant to understand the metalliclike state(s) in graphite in the quantum limit.PACS numbers: 71.30.+h, 72.20.My, 74.10.+v Conduction processes in two-dimensional (2D) electron (hole) systems, in particular the apparent metal-insulator transition (MIT) which takes place either varying the carrier concentration or applying a magnetic field H, have attracted a broad research interest [1]. Recently, a similar MIT driven by a magnetic field applied perpendicular to basal planes has been reported for graphite [2,3,4,5]. The quasi-particles (QP) in graphite behave as massless Dirac fermions (DF) with a linear dispersion relation, similar to the QP near the gap nodes in high-temperature superconductors. Theoretical analysis [6,7,8] suggests that the MIT in graphite is the condensed-matter realization of the magnetic catalysis (MC) phenomenon [9] known in relativistic theories of (2 + 1)-dimensional DF. According to this theory [6,7,8], the magnetic field H opens an insulating gap in the spectrum of DF of graphene, associated with the electron-hole (e-h) pairing, below a transition temperature T ce (H) which is an increasing function of field. However, at higher fields and at temperatures T < T max (H) an insulator-metal transition (IMT) occurs [2] indicating that additional physical processes may operate approaching the field H QL that pulls carriers into the lowest Landau level. The occurrence of superconducting correlations in the quantum limit (QL) [10,11] and below the temperature T max (H) has been proposed for graphite in Ref. [2]. On the other hand, authors of Ref. [8] argued that at high enough carrier concentration, the basal-plane resistance R b (H, T ) can decrease decreasing temperature below the e-h pairing temperature, and identified T max (H) with T ce (H). Other theoretical works predict the occurrence of the field-induced Luttinger liquid [12] and the integral quantum Hall effect (IQHE) [13] in graphite. All these indicate that understanding of the magnetic-field-induced insulating and metallic states in graphite is of importance and has an interdisciplinary interest. The aim of this Letter is to provide a fresh insight on the magnetotransport properties of graphite in the QL. We show that the IMT is generic to graphite with a sample-dependent

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Because of the long Fermi wavelength of itinerant electrons, the quantum limit of elemental bismuth (unlike most metals) can be attained with a moderate magnetic field. The quantized orbits of electrons shrink with increasing magnetic field. Beyond the quantum limit, the circumference of these orbits becomes shorter than the Fermi wavelength. We studied transport coefficients of a single crystal of bismuth up to 33 tesla, which is deep in this ultraquantum limit. The Nernst coefficient presents three unexpected maxima that are concomitant with quasi-plateaus in the Hall coefficient. The results suggest that this bulk element may host an exotic quantum fluid reminiscent of the one associated with the fractional quantum Hall effect and raise the issue of electron fractionalization in a three-dimensional metal.

We present a study of electric, thermal and thermoelectric transport in elemental Bismuth, which presents a Nernst coefficient much larger than what was found in correlated metals. We argue that this is due to the combination of an exceptionally low carrier density with a very long electronic mean-free-path. The low thermomagnetic figure of merit is traced to the lightness of electrons. Heavy-electron semi-metals, which keep a metallic behavior in presence of a magnetic field, emerge as promising candidates for thermomagnetic cooling at low temperatures.