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Pressure dependence of the superconducting transition temperature in C6Yb and C6Ca

Robert P. Smith, Anna Kusmartseva, Yuen T. C. Ko, Siddharth S Saxena, Ana Akrap, Laszlo Forro, Mukul Laad, Thomas E. Weller, Mark Ellerby, Neal T. Skipper

cond-mat.supr-conarXiv:cond-mat/0604204

Abstract

We have studied the evolution, with hydrostatic pressure, of the recently discovered superconductivity in the graphite intercalation compounds C6Yb and C6Ca. We present pressure-temperature phase diagrams, for both superconductors, established by electrical transport and magnetization measurements. In the range 0-1.2 GPa the superconducting transition temperature increases linearly with pressure in both materials with dTc/dP = +0.39 K/GPa and dTc/dP = +0.50 K/GPa for C6Yb and C6Ca respectively. The transition temperature in C6Yb, which has beenmeasured up to 2.3 GPa, reaches a peak at around 1.8 GPa and then starts to drop. We also discuss how this pressure dependence may be explained within a plasmon pairing mechanism.

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