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Contact:
Prof. Gianni Blatter
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Team fall 2003
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High-Tc cuprates are anisotropic and strongly type II superconductors where thermal fluctuations and quenched disorder play an important role. Vortex Matter then appears in several thermodynamic phases, weakly disordered Bragg-glass, vortex-liquid, and possibly a strongly disordered vortex-glass.
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Quantum Condensed Systems
We study superconductivity and superfluidity on the meso- and nanoscale. The group’s interest spans the fields of Vortex Matter in strongly fluctuating superconductors, novel phases in quantum degenerate trapped Fermi- and Bose gases, and superconducting structures for quantum computing.
Thermal fluctuations and quenched disorder drive numerous phase transitions in the vortex system of strongly type II anisotropic superconductors. Understanding melting, decoupling, and glassyness of this soft-matter system broadens our knowledge in statistical physics and helps in the technological advancement of materials [1].
Cooling atoms to the nano-Kelvin regime allows for the realization and study of new thermodynamic phase transitions and their associated phases, with an interesting synergy emerging between the fields of quantum atom optics and condensed matter physics. At present the focus is on bosonic/fermionic/mixed gases subject to an optical lattice with new phases (Mott-insulator, BCS-superfluid, supersolid) observed in experiments or proposed theoretically [2]. In superconducting devices the quantum liquid is protected from decoherence by the superconducting gap —- specially tuned structures hold the promise to serve as quantum bits in future quantum computing devices. Quiet and well protected qubits can be obtained with the help of p-junctions and particular geometries exploiting symmetry and frustration [3].
References:
[1] G. Blatter and V.B. Geshkenbein, in `The Physics of Superconductors’, eds. K.H. Bennemann and J.B. Ketterson (Springer, Berlin, 2003).
[2] H.P. Büchler, et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 90, 130401 (2003).
[3] L.B. Ioffe, et al., Nature 415, 503 (2002).
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