Monday, April 1, 2013

1303.7321 (P. Szabo et al.)

Point-contact spectroscopy of the phononic mechanism of
superconductivity in YB6
   [PDF]

P. Szabo, J. Girovsky, Z. Pribulova, J. Kacmarcik, T. Mori, P. Samuely
Lortz et al. [Phys. Rev. B 73, 024512 (2006)] have utilized specific heat and resistivity measurements as "thermal spectroscopies" to deconvolve the spectrum of the electron-phonon interaction in YB$_6$ assuming a major role of the low frequency phonon mode in mediating superconductivity. Here, we present direct point-contact spectroscopy studies of the superconducting interaction in this system. As a result the normalized superconducting gap reveals a strong coupling with $2\Delta/k_BT_c = 4$ and moreover the spectra contain nonlinearities typical of the electron-phonon interaction at energies around 8 meV. The in-magnetic-field measurements evidence that the phonon features found in the second derivative of the current-voltage characteristics are due to the energy dependence of the superconducting energy gap as their energy position shrinks equally as the gap is closing. This is a direct proof that the superconducting coupling in the system is due to the low energy Einstein-like phonon mode associated with the yttrium ion vibrations in a perfect agreement with determinations from bulk measurements.
View original: http://arxiv.org/abs/1303.7321

No comments:

Post a Comment