Heat Capacity in DC Fields

Specific heat of a material is a measure of heat necessary to raise the temperature of a given amount of material, typically a gram or a mol, by 1 Kelvin.

Near absolute zero, this bulk thermodynamic quantity is a sensitive probe of the low energy excitations of a complex quantum system. Such low energy excitations contain useful information about the nature of the ground state. For the canonical example of an ordinary (so-called ‟Fermi liquid‟) metal, the electronic charge-carrying quasiparticles) component of specific heat vanishes linearly with temperature and the lattice vibration (phonon) component vanishes as T3. The two different power-laws ultimately arise from the different quantum statistics of electrons (fermions) and phonons (bosons).

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Instrumentation

  • Compatible Magnets

  • Compatible Sample Environments

  • Available Equipment

Resistive Magnets

  • The relaxation technique is a completely home built set-up. The user will work the research faculty member in data acquisition, and mounting of their sample to the custom built high field calibrated calorimeters.

Related Publications

Kemper et al, Thermodynamic signature of a magnetic-field-driven phase transition within the superconducting state of an underdoped high-temperature superconductor, arXiv:1403.3702 (2014). Read online 

Riggs et al, Heat capacity through the magnetic-field-induced resistive transition in an underdoped high-temperature superconductor, Nature Physics 7, 332-335 (2011). Read online 

Riggs et al, Magnetic ordering of the RE lattice in REFeAsO: the odd case of Sm. A specific heat investigation in high magnetic field, Phys. Rev. B., 214404 (2009). Read online 

Staff Contacts

Last modified on 30 March 2016
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