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Sixia Hu

Publications and source records attributed to Sixia Hu.

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Field re-entrant superconductivity in Eu-doped infinite-layer nickelates

Intertwined superconducting and magnetic orders may give rise to exotic quantum phases, including field-induced and re-entrant superconductivity. However, such magnetism-enhanced superconductivity has remained elusive in superconductors with higher transition temperatures. While infinite-layer nickelates represent a new class of unconventional superconductors, the impact of rare-earth magnetism on superconducting properties remains largely unexplored. Here, we show that Eu-doped infinite-layer nickelate Sm$_{0.95-x}$Ca$_{0.05}$Eu$_x$NiO$_2$ exhibits a magnetic-field-induced re-entrant superconducting phase in the Eu-rich over-doped regime. Zero-resistance transport and high-field diamagnetic screening confirm the superconducting nature of this phase, which emerges after the initial suppression of low-field superconductivity and remains robust across a broad range of temperatures, fields and field orientations. In the same doping range, we observe nonlinear Hall transport and hysteretic magnetoresistance, indicating the unconventional nature of the re-entrant behaviour. While partially consistent with a compensation mechanism between the Eu-derived exchange field and the applied field, our data reveal pronounced deviations from this model at the highest-doping levels. Our findings establish infinite-layer nickelates as a fertile platform for exploring magnetically driven high-field superconductivity in strongly correlated oxides.

cond-mat.supr-con

Magnetic Ordering of Ammonium Cations in NH$_4$I, NH$_4$Br and NH$_4$Cl

The different types of magnetism arise mainly from how electrons move and interact with each other. In this work, we show how protons (H$^+$) also exhibit magnetic behavior. We measured the magnetic susceptibility of the ammonium halides and identified pronounced increases at 232 K, 233 K and 243 K for NH$_4$I, NH$_4$Br and NH$_4$Cl, respectively, which all coincide to the geometric ordering of its ammonium cations. With extensive literature establishing the fact that the ammonium cations exhibit rotational motion even towards the lowest temperatures, we take into account that the orbital motion of the protons carries a magnetic moment and find it to be larger than that of the paired electrons. Consequently, the structural phase transitions are magnetically-driven as the system attempts to lift 8-fold energy degeneracies of the proton orbitals via Jahn-Teller distortions. Our findings identify that NH$_4$$^+$ cations are capable of comprising magnetism which appears to be ubiquitous in ammonia-based molecular solids.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci