Enhanced critical currents of superconducting ErNi2B2C in the ferromagnetically ordered state

We report on transport and magnetization studies of the critical current in single crystal ErNi2B2C for applied fields below 4 kG. Below T approximately 2.5 K superconductivity coexists with weak ferromagnetism. We find that the critical currents are strongly enhanced for all field orientations in this ferromagnetic regime, corresponding to a threefold increase of the pinning force of the flux line lattice. We speculate that this increase is due to strong pair breaking by the ferromagnetism.     

Yb14ZnSb11: charge balance in zintl compounds as a route to intermediate Yb valence

The results of thermodynamic, transport, and x-ray diffraction measurements of single crystals of the new compound Yb14ZnSb11 are presented. These data indicate an intermediate Yb valence scenario, with a spin fluctuation temperature of approximately 85 K. The compound is weakly metallic and is isostructural with the charge-balanced Zintl compound Yb14AlSb11. The intermediate Yb valence can be qualitatively accounted for by considering the charge counting arguments of the nonmetallic parent, and charge balance in Zintl-related materials appears to be a viable route to designing other compounds with intermediate valence constituents.     

Magnetic and superconducting phase diagrams in ErNi2B2C

We present measurements of the superconducting upper critical field H_c2(T) and the magnetic phase diagram of the superconductor ErNi₂B₂C made with a scanning tunneling microscope (STM). The magnetic field was applied in the basal plane of the tetragonal crystal structure. We have found large gapless regions in the superconducting phase diagram of ErNi₂B₂C, extending between different magnetic transitions. A close correlation between magnetic transitions and H_c2(T) is found, showing that superconductivity is strongly linked to magnetism.     

Foliations by curves on threefolds

We study the conormal sheaves and singular schemes of one-dimensional foliations on smooth projective varieties X of dimension 3 and Picard rank 1. We prove that if the singular scheme has dimension 0, then the conormal sheaf is μ-stable whenever the tangent bundle $TX$ is stable, and apply this fact to the characterization of certain irreducible components of the moduli space of rank 2 reflexive sheaves on ${\mathbb{P}}^3$ and on a smooth quadric hypersurface $Q_3\subset {\mathbb{P}}^4$. Finally, we give a classification of local complete intersection foliations, that is, foliations with locally free conormal sheaves, of degree 0 and 1 on Q₃.