Observation of Half-Quantum Magnetic Flux in Sr2RuO4
Professor Maeno of Kyoto University (Kyoto, Japan) and Assistant Professor Budakian of University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign, IllinoisCUSA) were the leaders of both teams, and details of the research were published in the scientific Journal Science on the same day*.
Strontium ruthenium oxide (SRO) is an unconventional superconductor that has been proposed as the solid-state analog of the A-phase of superfluid helium 3 in which half-quantum vortex was predicted theoretically more than 30 years ago. In this research, magnetic measurements at 0.4 K were made, at University of Illinois, on a specimen fabricated by drilling a hole of 500 nm diameter on the 2 ƒÊm square Sr2RuO4 crystal grown at Kyoto University and placed on a micro-fabricated Si cantilever device developed at University of Illinois. The observed half-quantum magnetic flux, according to the news-releases from both universities, verifies that SRO is a spin-triplet superconductor and that application to topological quantum computing and spintronics is expected.
Journal information
J. Jang, D. G. Ferguson, V. Vakaryuk, R. Budakian, S. B. Chung, P. M. Goldbart and M. Maeno, “Observation of Hahf-Height Magnetization Steps in Sr2RuO4”, Science Vol. 331 No. 6014 pp.186-188, Published 14 January 2011, DOI: 10.1126/science.1193839
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