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ORNL: Neutrons find ‘missing’ magnetism of plutonium

Posted at 12:44 pm July 12, 2015
By Oak Ridge National Laboratory Leave a Comment

Doug Abernathy and Marc Janoschek

Doug Abernathy, left, ARCS instrument scientist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and Marc Janoschek, Los Alamos National Laboratory, prepare their sample for experiments at the Spallation Neutron Source. (Photo by ORNL)

 

Groundbreaking work at two U.S. Department of Energy national laboratories has confirmed plutonium’s magnetism, which scientists have long theorized but have never been able to experimentally observe. The advances that enabled the discovery hold great promise for materials, energy, and computing applications.

Plutonium was first produced in 1940, and its unstable nucleus allows it to undergo fission, making it useful for nuclear fuels as well as for nuclear weapons. Much less known, however, is that the electronic cloud surrounding the plutonium nucleus is equally unstable and makes plutonium the most electronically complex element in the periodic table, with intriguingly intricate properties for a simple elemental metal.

While conventional theories have successfully explained plutonium’s complex structural properties, they also predict that plutonium should order magnetically. This is in stark contrast with experiments, which had found no evidence for magnetic order in plutonium. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Front Page News, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Top Stories, U.S. Department of Energy Tagged With: ARCS, B. Chakrabarti, DOE, Doug Abernathy, dynamical mean field theory, electrons, Eric Bauer, European Commission, F. Trouw, G. Kotliar, G.H. Lander, J.-X. Zhu, J.D. Thompson, J.M. Lawrence, J.N. Mitchell, K. Haule, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory Directed Research and Development, M. Ramos, magnetic fluctuations, magnetic order, magnetism, Marc Janoschek, Mark Lumsden, national laboratories, neutron spectroscopy, Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Office of Science, OLCF, ORNL, Pinaki Das, plutonium, plutonium ion, plutonium nucleus, plutonium-239, plutonium-242, Rutgers University, S. Richmond, Science Advances, Scott McCall, Siegfried Hecker, Spallation Neutron Source, U.S. Department of Energy

ORNL scientists uncover clues to role of magnetism in iron-based superconductors

Posted at 1:12 am August 25, 2014
By Oak Ridge National Laboratory Leave a Comment

Magnetism of Iron-based Superconductors

Oak Ridge National Laboratory scientists used scanning transmission electron microscopy to measure atomic-scale magnetic behavior in several families of iron-based superconductors. (Photo courtesy ORNL)

 

New measurements of atomic-scale magnetic behavior in iron-based superconductors by researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Vanderbilt University are challenging conventional wisdom about superconductivity and magnetism.

The study published in Advanced Materials provides experimental evidence that local magnetic fluctuations can influence the performance of iron-based superconductors, which transmit electric current without resistance at relatively high temperatures.

“In the past, everyone thought that magnetism and superconductivity could not coexist,” said ORNL’s Claudia Cantoni, the study’s first author. “The whole idea of superconductors is that they expel magnetic fields. But in reality things are more complicated.”

Superconductivity is strongly suppressed by the presence of long-range magnetism—where atoms align their magnetic moments over large volumes—but the ORNL study suggests that rapid fluctuations of local magnetic moments have a different effect. Not only does localized magnetism exist, but it is also correlated with a high critical temperature, the point at which the material becomes superconducting. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Front Page News, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Science, U.S. Department of Energy Tagged With: Advanced Materials, Andrew May, Athena Safa-Sefat, atomic-scale magnetic behavior, Brian Sales, Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences, Claudia Cantoni, DOE, Elbio Dagotto, electric current, electron energy loss spectroscopy, iron-based superconductors, Jonathan Mitchell, Juan-Carlos Idrobo, magnetic moments, magnetic properties, magnetism, Matthew Chisholm, Michael McGuire, National Science Foundation, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Office of Science, Orbital occupancy and charge doping in iron-based superconductors, ORNL, scanning transmission electron microscopy, superconductivity, superconductors, Tom Berlijn, U.S. Department of Energy, University of Tennessee Stephen Pennycook, Vanderbilt University, Wu Zhou

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