Unconventional superconductivity (SC) is said to occur when Cooper pair formation is dominated by repulsive electron-electron interactions, so that the symmetry of the pair wave function is other than an isotropic s-wave. The strong, on-site, repulsive electron- electron interactions that are the proximate cause of such SC are more typically drivers of commensurate magnetism. Indeed, it is the suppression of commensurate antiferromagnetism (AF) that usually allows this type of unconventional superconductivity to emerge.

To establish the mechanism of unconventional superconductivity in Sr 2RuO4, a prerequisite is direct information concerning the momentum-space structure of the energy gaps Δi(k), and in particular whether the pairing strength is stronger ("dominant") on the quasi-one-dimensional (α and β) or on the quasi-two-dimensional (γ) Fermi surfaces. We present scanning tunneling microscopy measurements of the density of states spectra in the superconducting state of Sr 2RuO4 for 0.1Tc < T < Tc and analyze them along with published thermodynamic data using a simple phenomenological model.

The Cooper pairing mechanism of heavy fermionsuperconductors, long thought to be due to spin fluctuations, has not yet been determined. It is the momentum space (k-space) structure of the superconducting energy gap Δ(k) that encodes specifics of this pairing mechanism. However, because the energy scales are so low, it has not been possible to directly measure Δ(k) for any heavy fermion superconductor.

Iron-based high-temperature superconductivity develops when the 'parent' antiferromagnetic/orthorhombic phase is suppressed, typically by introduction of dopant atoms. But their impact on atomic-scale electronic structure, although in theory rather complex, is unknown experimentally. What is known is that a strong transport anisotropy with its resistivity maximum along the crystal b axis, develops with increasing concentration of dopant atoms; this 'nematicity'vanishes when the parent phase disappears near the maximum superconducting T c.

Using a novel SQUID-based torsional oscillator (TO) technique to achieve increased sensitivity and dynamic range, we studied TO's containing solid 4He. Below ∼250 mK, the TO resonance frequency f increases and its dissipation D passes through a maximum as first reported by Kim and Chan. To achieve unbiased analysis of such 4He rotational dynamics, we implemented a new approach based upon the generalized rotational susceptibility χ 4He -1(ω, T ).

We review the current state of efforts to use resonant soft X-ray scattering (RSXS), which is an elastic, momentum-resolved, valence band probe of strongly correlated electron systems, to study stripe-like phenomena in copper-oxide superconductors and related materials. We review the historical progress including RSXS studies of Wigner crystallization in spin ladder materials, stripe order in 214-phase nickelates, 214-phase cuprates, and other systems.

A motivation for the development of atomically resolved spectroscopic imaging STM (SISTM) has been to study the broken symmetries in the electronic structure of cuprate high temperature superconductors. Both the d-wave superconducting (dSC) and the pseudogap (PG) phases of underdoped cuprates exhibit two distinct classes of electronic states when studied using SI-STM. The class consists of the dispersive Bogoliubov quasiparticles of a homogeneous d-wave superconductor.

Superconductivity emerges from the cuprate antiferromagnetic Mott state with hole doping. The resulting electronic structure is not understood, although changes in the state of oxygen atoms seem paramount. Hole doping first destroys the Mott state, yielding a weak insulator where electrons localize only at low temperatures without a full energy gap. At higher doping levels, the ' pseudogap', a weakly conducting state with an anisotropic energy gap and intra-unit-cell breaking of 90 ° rotational (C 4v) symmetry, appears.

We use spectroscopic imaging scanning tunneling microscopy (SI-STM) to visualize the spatial symmetries of the electronic states that occur at the pseudogap energy scale in underdoped cuprates. We find evidence for the local intra-unit-cell electronic nematicity - by which we mean the disordered breaking of C 4v symmetry within each CuO 2 unit cell [1]. We also find that the coexisting incommensurate (smectic) electronic modulations couple to the intra-unit-cell nematicity through their 2π topological defects [2]. © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Direct visualization of electronic-structure symmetry within each crystalline unit cell is a new technique for complex electronic matter research (Lawler et al 2010 Nature 466 347-51, Schmidt et al 2011 New J. Phys. 13 065014, Fujita K et al 2012 J. Phys. Soc. Japan 81 011005). By studying the Bragg peaks in Fourier transforms of electronic structure images and particularly by resolving both the real and imaginary components of the Bragg amplitudes, distinct types of intra-unit-cell symmetry breaking can be studied.