The temperature and magnetic field dependence of the in-plane thermal conductivity kappa of the iron-arsenide superconductor Ba(Fe(1-x)Co(x))2As2 was measured down to T approximately 50 mK and up to H = 15 T as a function of Co concentration x in the range 0.048 < or = x < or = 0.114. At H = 0, a negligible residual linear term in kappa/T as T-->0 at all x shows that the superconducting gap has...

Software techniques have been developed to take low-amplitude data in various patterns, assign a figure of merit to a set of data readings, edit data for erroneous readings (or other experimental variations), and to alert the experimenter if the detected errors are beyond the scope of the software. Erroneous voltage readings from digital voltmeters, intermittent electrical connections, and an a...

A recently developed theory for the problem of Andreev reflection between a normal metal (N) and a multiband superconductor (MBS) assumes that the incident wave from the normal metal is coherently transmitted through several bands inside the superconductor. Such splitting of the probability amplitude into several channels is the analogue of a quantum waveguide. Thus, the appropriate matching co...

The search for topological superconductors (TSCs) is one of the most urgent contemporary problems in condensed matter systems. TSCs are characterized by a full superconducting gap in the bulk and topologically protected gapless surface (or edge) states. Within each vortex core of TSCs, there exists the zero-energy Majorana bound states, which are predicted to exhibit non-Abelian statistics and ...

In a recent experiment, signatures of Majorana fermion (MF) were found in the vortex core threading a heterostructure composed of n layers of topological insulator (TI) deposited on a bulk s-wave superconductor. Here we provide strong theoretical support to the experiment. First, we demonstrate that MF modes appear on both top and bottom layers of TI, and are well separated for n ~ 6. The top M...

Over the past six years, superconductivity at high temperatures has been reported in a variety of hydrogen-rich compounds under pressure. That high-temperature should exist these materials is expected according to conventional theory superconductivity, as shown by detailed calculations. However here we argue that experimental observations rule out materials. Our results indicate either are unco...

In superconductors where the coherence length is comparable to the Fermi wavelength, the vortex viscosity depends on the velocity of the vortex, leading to non linear equations of motion. The trajectories of vortices driven by a. c. fields show a variety of behaviors as function of frequency. Finite pertubations give rise to very long lived transients. The relevance of these results to experime...

When a tunneling barrier between two superconductors is formed by a normal material that would be a superconductor in the absence of phase fluctuations, the resulting Josephson effect can undergo an enormous enhancement. We establish this novel proximity effect by a general argument as well as a numerical simulation and argue that it may underlie recent experimental observations of the giant pr...

Zhenhua Ning Department of Physics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801, USA (Dated: December 13, 2006) Abstract This paper tries to give a clear description of the motion of vortex and the vortex glass transitions in high Tc superconductors from both theoretical analysis and experimental observation. Then a controversy of the location of the vortex glass transition in ...

The Fulde-Ferrell-Larkin-Ovchinnikov (FFLO) state can be found in layered dwave superconductors such as high Tc cuprates and κ-(ET)2 salts in a planar magnetic field. We show the superconducting order parameter forms two dimensional crystalline lattice in the FFLO state for d-wave superconductors. Also the quasiparticle density of states and the thermodynamics of FFLO state are constructed. The...