Exploring a New Family of High-:mil:`T_c` Superconductors: the Iron-Arsenides

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Speaker(s): Jenny Hoffman

I will give a review of superconductivity research over the last century, culminating in the recent, exciting discovery of a second family of high-( T_c ) superconductors based on iron and arsenic. We are now studying these new superconductors using a low temperature scanning tunneling microscope (STM), built with the help of two Harvey Mudd alums, now graduate students at Harvard. We have used this STM to image the superconducting density of electronic states with atomic resolution. We have also imaged a disordered lattice of magnetic vortices, which demonstrates strong bulk pinning in these new materials, a necessary condition for practical superconducting applications.

Colloquium

Junior and senior physics majors attend our biweekly colloquium series, held on Tuesday afternoons at 4:30 p.m. in Shanahan B460. The talks are open to all students and to the public, and are frequently attended by scientists from the other Claremont Colleges, Cal Poly Pomona, and others. The series features speakers from a broad range of institutions and fields of physics.