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Center for Nonlinear Studies |
CeRhIn5, discovered at Los Alamos 15 years ago, is a model system for understanding strongly correlated electron systems. Correlated electron systems abound with remarkable phenomena, such as the fractional quantum Hall effect, colossal magnetoresistance, and superconductivity. These phenomena arise due to competing energy scales. Heavy fermions are a particular striking manifestation of this competition, where itinerant electrons interact with localized magnetic moments to yield new effective heavy quasiparticles with masses hundreds of times larger than a free electron. These new heavy quasiparticles have additional instabilities to magnetic, superconducting, and other exotic states, that are prototypical of many strongly correlated electron systems. Of the wealth of heavy fermion materials CeRhIn5 and its sister compounds are particularly fascinating for three principle reasons. First, their incredible purity reveals new phenomena and enables detailed experimental studies not possible in other materials. Second, it has the highest superconducting transition temperature of any heavy fermion material. Third, due to the small energy scales it is highly tunable between different ground states with only modest perturbations. In this talk, I will review the basic properties, relevant energy scales, new surprises, and open questions from the CeRhIn5 family of heavy fermion materials.
Host: Mila Adamska