Adiabatic demagnetization is currently gaining strong interest in searching for alternatives to (3)He-based refrigeration techniques for achieving temperatures below 2 K. The main reasons for that are the recent shortage and high price of the rare helium isotope (3)He. Here we report the discovery of a large magnetocaloric effect in the intermetallic compound YbPt2Sn, which allows adiabatic dem...

We describe techniques used to fabricate the cold stage of an adiabatic demagnetization refrigerator that uses the paramagnetic salt ferric ammonium alum. We discuss the design of a leak-tight housing for the salt as well as a technique for growing ferric ammonium alum crystals that results in a housing filled with > 98% refrigerant. These techniques have proven to be reliable in creating robus...

We propose a new scheme aimed at cooling nanostructures to microkelvin temperature based on the well established technique of adiabatic nuclear demagnetization: we attach each device measurement lead to an individual nuclear refrigerator, allowing efficient thermal contact to a microkelvin bath. On a prototype consisting of a parallel network of nuclear refrigerators, temperatures of ∼1 mK simu...

It is experimentally demonstrated that an adiabatic demagnetization-remagnetization in the laboratory frame, where the Zeeman order of abundant nuclei is first adiabatically converted into the dipolar order, and then, into the Zeeman order of rare nuclei, can significantly increase polarization of rare nuclei compared to the conventional cross-polarization technique.

The lowest temperatures ever measured have been produced by cascade adiabatic nuclear demagnetization of copper and rhodium. Ultimately, spontaneous antiferromagnetic ordering of rhodium nuclei is anticipated. High-sensitivity SQUID-NMR measurements at high nuclear polarization in low magnetic "elds have been used to study the mutual interactions between the nuclear spins of rhodium in the meta...

When immersed in liquid 3He, the nanometer strands of aerogel are coated with a thin layer of solid 3He, forming a network of irregular nanotubes. Owing to its high purity and weak interactions, this system is ideal for studying fundamental processes. We report the first experiments on solid 3He in aerogel at ultralow temperatures, cooled by direct adiabatic demagnetization. Simultaneous nuclea...

It is widely believed that electron dynamics in the shock front is essentially collisionless and determined by the quasistationary magnetic and electric ®elds in the shock. In thick shocks the electron motion is adiabatic: the magnetic moment is conserved throughout the shock and v? / B. In very thin shocks with large cross-shock potential (the last feature is typical for shocks with strong ele...