Superconducting properties and materials articles within Nature Communications

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    Lithium metal under extreme pressures shows a sequence of structural phase transitions. Here, the authors use neutron scattering and X-ray diffraction techniques under high pressure to expand the experimental phase diagram of lithium, showing an unexpected deviation from existing boundaries.

    • Anne Marie Schaeffer
    • , Weizhao Cai
    •  & Shanti Deemyad

  • Article
    | Open Access

    In type-I superconductors the London penetration depth relates the self-field critical current density to the critical field. Here, the authors show that this relation extends to thin films of type-II superconductors, providing the chance to compute the penetration depth from critical current measurements.

    • E. F. Talantsev
    •  & J. L. Tallon

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The interplay between magnetic and superconducting phases is important to understand the physics of iron-based superconductivity. Here, the authors use thermodynamic measurements on Ba1−xKxFe2As2 single crystals to provide details of its phase diagram and the re-entrance of a C2spin-density-wave phase.

    • A. E. Böhmer
    • , F. Hardy
    •  & C. Meingast

  • Article
    | Open Access

    A proper theoretical description for unconventional superconductivity in iron-based compounds remains elusive. Here, the authors, to capture the electron correlation strength and the role of Fermi surfaces, report ARPES measurements of three iron chalcogenide superconductors to establish universal features.

    • M. Yi
    • , Z-K Liu
    •  & D.H. Lu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The pairing gap of the high-Tc cuprates has been expected to close at the transition temperature, similarly to the case of conventional superconductors. Here the authors perform ARPES measurements on Bi2212, and reveal a point nodal gap formation beyond Tc, characterized in terms of three parameters.

    • Takeshi Kondo
    • , W. Malaeb
    •  & S. Shin

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Quantum simulation offers an unparalleled computational resource, but realizing it for fermionic systems is challenging due to their particle statistics. Here the authors report on the time evolutions of fermionic interactions implemented with digital techniques on a nine-qubit superconducting circuit.

    • R. Barends
    • , L. Lamata
    •  & John M. Martinis

  • Article
    | Open Access

    High-Tc superconductivity is thought to be associated with spatial electronic ordering, which for cuprates is not well understood yet. Here the authors use Monte Carlo simulations to show the emergence of a soft-matter-like electronic phase between the antiferromagnetic and the superconducting states.

    • M. Capati
    • , S. Caprara
    •  & J. Lorenzana

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The pseudo-gap phenomenon is central to the description of high-Tcsuperconductivity in copper oxides. Here, the authors investigate nearly optimally doped YBCO using polarized neutron scattering to characterize intra-unit-cell magnetic correlations in relation with the pseudo-gap temperature.

    • L. Mangin-Thro
    • , Y. Sidis
    •  & P. Bourges

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Spin-entangled electron pairs are one possible resource for future solid-state quantum information processing systems. Here, the authors directly prove spin entanglement between two electrons that had previously been a Cooper pair in a superconducting lead but were split using two quantum dots.

    • R. S. Deacon
    • , A. Oiwa
    •  & S. Tarucha

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Spin triplet superconductivity may benefit spintronics, providing dissipation-free spin-polarized currents. Here, the authors demonstrate macroscopic quantum tunnelling in spin filter Josephson junctions containing a ferromagnetic insulator barrier of GdN, evidencing unconventional superconductivity below 100 mK.

    • D. Massarotti
    • , A. Pal
    •  & F. Tafuri

  • Article |

    Two-dimensional charge ordering cannot be fully described by Peierls-like weak coupling mechanisms appropriate for one-dimensional materials. Here, the authors show how strong orbital-dependent electron–phonon coupling drives two-dimensional charge ordering in archetypal niobium diselenide.

    • Felix Flicker
    •  & Jasper van Wezel

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Future quantum computers will employ error correction to protect quantum data from decoherence and faulty hardware. Here, using a quantum processor with five superconducting qubits, the authors demonstrate how to protect one logical qubit from bitflip errors using multi-qubit, stabilizer measurements.

    • D. Ristè
    • , S. Poletto
    •  & L. DiCarlo

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The alloy bismuth-palladium is a candidate material for observing topological superconductivity. Here, the authors study the interplay of spin–orbit interactions and superconductivity in this noncentrosymmetric compound using scanning tunnelling spectroscopy and relativistic first-principles calculations.

    • Zhixiang Sun
    • , Mostafa Enayat
    •  & Peter Wahl

  • Article |

    Strong electron correlations often lead to unusual electronic ground states. Here, the authors present evidence for a density wave in the compound CeRhIn5, the first for a so-called heavy-fermion metal where electrons have a very high effective mass.

    • Philip J. W. Moll
    • , Bin Zeng
    •  & Filip Ronning

  • Article |

    A Meissner current is the resistance-free flow of charge induced by magnetic field in a superconductor. Here, the authors observe that Meissner currents flowing through an area containing a pinning centre generate two opposite-sense current half-loops that produce a bound vortex–antivortex pair.

    • Jun-Yi Ge
    • , Joffre Gutierrez
    •  & Victor V. Moshchalkov

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Most of the peculiar effects resulting from superconductivity have counterparts in nonsuperconducting nanoelectronic devices, but not yet in the a.c. Josephson effect. Here, the authors propose how to generate a transient version of this phenomenon in a normal conductor by abruptly changing the bias voltage.

    • Benoit Gaury
    • , Joseph Weston
    •  & Xavier Waintal

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The nature and universality of the ordering phenomena observed in the normal state of high-temperature superconductors remain unclear. Here, Wu et al. observe several aspects of incipient charge ordering in YBCO via NMR measurements, clarifying the role of quenched disorder in their emergence.

    • Tao Wu
    • , Hadrien Mayaffre
    •  & Marc-Henri Julien

  • Article |

    The heavy fermion system CeRhIn5has a local quantum critical point, but its role in the onset of superconductivity is unclear. Here, the authors tune the quantum critical point by tin doping and verify that fluctuations from the antiferromagnetic criticality promote this unconventional superconductivity.

    • S. Seo
    • , E. Park
    •  & Tuson Park

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Material defects create spurious two-level systems that are a source of noise in nanostructured devices. Lisenfeld et al.use a superconducting qubit to perform high-resolution defect spectroscopy, providing direct evidence of quantum coherent interaction between two defects.

    • Jürgen Lisenfeld
    • , Grigorij J. Grabovskij
    •  & Alexey V. Ustinov

  • Article |

    When the insulators SrTiO3 and LaAlO3 are brought together, a two-dimensional electron gas forms that exhibits both superconductivity and magnetic behaviour. Mathias Scheurer and Jörg Schmalian propose a link between the topological nature of the superconducting state and its microscopic mechanism.

    • Mathias S Scheurer
    •  & Jörg Schmalian

  • Article |

    The relationship between superconductivity and antiferromagnetism is an unresolved question in electron-doped high-Tc superconductors. Saadaoui et al. perform low-energy muon spin relaxation measurements to study the phase diagram of La2−xCexCuO4−δat the magnetic-superconducting transition region.

    • H. Saadaoui
    • , Z. Salman
    •  & R. F. Kiefl

  • Article |

    It remains to be seen if high-Tc superconductors rely on similar Fermi-surface instabilities as their BCS counterparts. Miao et al. study the high-Tc compound LiFe1−xCoxAs with high-resolution ARPES and find a robust gap with Co doping that suggests the order parameter is not tied to such instabilities.

    • H. Miao
    • , T. Qian
    •  & H. Ding

  • Article
    | Open Access

    High-temperature superconducting cuprates exhibit hour-glass shaped magnetic excitation spectra which are not well understood. Here, the authors show that the hour-glass shaped magnetic excitation spectra in an isostructural cobaltate arise from nanoscopic phase separation.

    • Y. Drees
    • , Z. W. Li
    •  & A. C. Komarek

  • Article |

    Understanding unconventional superconductivity is a challenge in condensed matter physics. Ab initiocalculations by Takahiro Misawa and Masatoshi Imada reproduce many experimental features of the iron-based superconductor LaFeAsO, and suggest the mechanism is mediated by electron density fluctuations.

    • Takahiro Misawa
    •  & Masatoshi Imada

  • Article |

    Superconducting circuits are one possible way of realizing qubits, but the time for which they can maintain their quantum state is limited by single-electron-like excitations. Wang et al. now demonstrate a technique for controlling these so-called quasiparticles and improving qubit lifetime.

    • C. Wang
    • , Y. Y. Gao
    •  & R. J. Schoelkopf

  • Article |

    Nematic charge order has been observed in both cuprate and iron-based superconductors, but whether this is peculiar to these materials or a universal feature of unconventional superconductivity is unclear. Frandsen et al.have now found it in a third family of superconductors—the titanium-oxypnictides.

    • Benjamin A. Frandsen
    • , Emil S. Bozin
    •  & Simon J. L. Billinge

  • Article |

    So-called two-dimensional superconductivity has been reported in several material systems but just how thin a system can be and maintain a superconducting state has been difficult to determine. Da Jiang and colleagues demonstrate that Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8+xcontinues to be superconducting even when it is just half a unit cell thick.

    • Da Jiang
    • , Tao Hu
    •  & Mianheng Jiang

  • Article |

    The superconducting gap of most unconventional superconductors has nodes that support low-energy excitations. Mizukami et al. report that disorder introduced by electron irradiation in BaFe2(As1−xPx)2induces a sequence of transitions from a nodal to a nodeless gap and then to another gapless state.

    • Y. Mizukami
    • , M. Konczykowski
    •  & T. Shibauchi

  • Article |

    Qudits, multiple-level quantum systems, enable more efficient scaling of physical resources in quantum computing than qubits, but they are more difficult to control. Svetitsky et al.now experimentally demonstrate a simplifying technique that converts a four-level qudit into a pair of qubits.

    • Elisha Svetitsky
    • , Haim Suchowski
    •  & Nadav Katz

  • Article |

    One trait common to most unconventional superconductors—including cuprates, heavy-fermion systems and iron-pnictides—is that the superconducting state appears near the point where antiferromagnetism is suppressed. Wu et al. report discovery of superconductivity on the verge of antiferromagnetic order in CrAs.

    • Wei Wu
    • , Jinguang Cheng
    •  & Jianlin Luo

  • Article |

    Superconducting flux qubits operating as two-level systems can act as artificial atoms, and so represent a potential metamaterial building block. Macha et al.assemble 20 such qubits into a metamaterial in which the ‘atoms’ are collectively coupled to the quantized mode of a microwave photon field.

    • Pascal Macha
    • , Gregor Oelsner
    •  & Alexey V. Ustinov

  • Article |

    Quantum simulators offer a test bed to emulate physical phenomena that are difficult to reproduce numerically. Using a multi-element superconducting quantum circuit, Chen et al.emulate weak localization for a mesoscopic system using a control sequence that lets them continuously tune the level of disorder.

    • Yu Chen
    • , P. Roushan
    •  & John M. Martinis

  • Article
    | Open Access

    When superconductivity emerges in a thin superconductor grown on a ferromagnet, it does so in an array of interacting superconducting and normally conducting channels. Maria Iavarone and colleagues use scanning tunnelling microscopy to image how these channels form and interact.

    • M. Iavarone
    • , S. A. Moore
    •  & S. D. Bader

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