English

Plutonium and Quantum Criticlity

Materials Science 2007-05-23 v1 Strongly Correlated Electrons

Abstract

The unusual properties of elemental plutonium have long been a puzzle. It has been suggested that these properties may be related to quantum criticality [G. Chapline, J. L. Smith LA Sci 26 (2000) 1]. In this talk we will describe some experimental observations on rare earth and actinide materials which suggest that there are pairing correlations in all f-electron metals, and that the anomalous properties of the elemental actinides in the vicinity of Np/Pu/Am,even at elevated temperatures, is associated with a critical point in the variation of the density of paired electrons with atomic number.

Cite

@article{arxiv.cond-mat/0701064,
  title  = {Plutonium and Quantum Criticlity},
  author = {G. Chapline and M. Fluss and S. McCall},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cond-mat/0701064},
  year   = {2007}
}

Comments

6 pages, 2 figures