Zachary Fisk
University of California, Irvine
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Primary Section: 33, Applied Physical Sciences Membership Type:
Member
(elected 1996)
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Research Interests
My interest is in the electronic properties of materials, especially magnetic and superconducting ground states at low temperature. A goal has been to understand how details of structure and composition determine such ground states, as well as the marked variation in electronic properties at the boundary between various non-magnetic, magnetic, and superconducting ground states. In particular, my studies have investigated intermetallic compounds of transition metal and rare earth elements with unstable valence. Conduction electrons in these compounds can, in a certain sense, acquire extra degrees of freedom from the d- and f-electrons of the transition metal and rare earth atoms, leading to effective electron masses of over one hundred times that of the bare electron. These heavy electrons have interesting low temperature properties, including novel magnetically ordered states and exotic superconductivity with multiple transitions.
