Energy gaps and Kohn anomalies in elemental superconductors.

Kohn anomalies in superconductors.

I present the detailed behavior of phonon dispersion curves near momenta which span the electronic Fermi sea in a superconductor. I demonstrate that an anomaly, similar to the metallic Kohn anomaly, exists in a superconductor’s dispersion curves when the frequency of the phonon spanning the Fermi sea exceeds twice the superconducting energy gap. This anomaly occurs at approximately the same mom...

Observation of multiple superconducting gaps in Fe₁+yTe₁-xSex via a nanoscale approach to point-contact spectroscopy.

We report a novel experimental approach to point-contact Andreev reflection spectroscopy with diagnostic capability via a unique design for nanoscale normal metal/superconductor devices with excellent thermomechanical stability, and have employed this method to unveil the existence of two superconducting energy gaps in iron chalcogenide Fe(1+y)Te(1-x)Se(x), which is crucial for understanding i...

Interpolation Inequalities in Pattern Formation

We prove some interpolation inequalities which arise in the analysis of pattern formation in physics. They are the strong version of some already known estimates in weak form that are used to give a lower bound of the energy in many contexts (coarsening and branching in micromagnetics and superconductors). The main ingredient in the proof of our inequalities is a geometric construction which wa...

Pairing Symmetry and Multiple Energy Gaps in Multi-Orbital Iron-Pnictide Superconductors

Superconductivity in the alkali metals

At ambient pressure there are 29 elemental superconductors in the periodic table, none of which is an alkali metal. The first alkali metal to become superconducting under high pressure is Cs followed years later by Li. Alkali metals are believed to be exemplary free-electron systems. The fact that an alkali metal becomes superconducting at all is surprising and is a result of the fact that unde...