Oxides of the Y-Ba-Cu-O system are found to show onset of superconductivity in the 100–120 K region.

Spherical shells of fluid in general relativity are considered. The density is assumed to be spatially uniform and it is found that there may be three cases of positive, negative and vanishing Schwarzschild mass of the shell although the density and the pressure are both positive throughout. However the negative mass case has to be associated with a singularity representing a negative mass particle and so is unphysical. The zero mass solution has the intriguing feature that the geometry on either side of the shell is Minkowskian and the space is closed. This closure of the space saves the present result from being in contradiction with the positive energy theorems. Earlier investigations claiming zero-mass distributions are also discussed.

A detailed study of point contact tunnelling into ceramic YBCO with electrochemically etched tips of Pt, Nb and W is reported. The superconducting gap parameter (Δ) has been extracted fromI —V and dI/dV —V curves using various procedures. Our results indicate a gap value of about 20 meV. We observe that the zero bias conductance is strongly dependent on the junction resistance. The normal state conductance varies linearly with bias voltage and the conductance curves are asymmetric with respect to polarity of the bias voltage. With contacts of very high junction resistance, we observe G(0)/G(100 mV) has a value as low as 1/6. This may be the lowest value reported so far.

We report here both hardware and software for an ac susceptibility measurement system, namely the design and construction of the cryostat, coil system, sample rod assembly and also the automation of the sample rod movement, bridge control and nulling etc with the help of an inexpensive Z-80A microprocessor via a home-made IEEE-488 interface. The variable parameters are temperature, magnitude of the rms field and frequency. An entirely new dynamic bridge nulling algorithm with continuous sample movement, which eliminates to a large extent problems related to time-dependent drifts, has been developed. We also present some experimental data collected with this system.

By making a combination of both point contact and barrier type tunnel junctions on a single sample of the highT_c superconductor BSCCO (2212) single crystal, we have shown that as the tunneling tip is slowly retracted from the surface a point contact junction gradually evolves from a N-S short to a high resistance tunnel junction. The scaled dynamic conductance (dI/dV) of this point contact tunnel junction becomes almost identical to that of a conventional barrier type tunnel junction and both show a linear dI/dV —V curve. The observation implies that at high resistance a point contact junction behaves in the same way as a barrier type tunnel junction. We suggested that the almost linear tunneling conductance obtained in both the cases most likely arises due to an intrinsic characteristic of the surface of the crystal comprising of a mosaic of superconducting regions of the order of a few nanometers. We also conclude that the barrierless (N-S) point contact obtained by piercing the surface oxide layer of the crystal shows Andreev reflection which we suggest as the origin of the zero bias anomaly often observed in point contact junctions.

We describe an automated calorimeter for measurement of specific heat in the temperature range 10 K>T>0.5 K. It uses sample of moderate size (100–1000 mg), has a moderate precision and accuracy (2%–5%), is easy to operate and the measurements can be done quickly with He⁴ economy. The accuracy of this calorimeter was checked by measurement of specific heat of copper and that of aluminium near its superconducting transition temperature.

In this paper we present a phenomenological model to analyze the heat release at the glass transition as observed in the continuous cooling calorimetry when a supercooled liquid freezes into the glassy state. We developed this model for the quantitative analysis of the experimental data to obtain the specific heat and the parameters which govern the structural relaxation. A description of the model and the detailed analysis are presented and the relaxation parameters are compared with the corresponding values obtained from the specific heat spectroscopy. Our analysis reveals several interesting aspects which include the effects of delayed enthalpy relaxation and the nonequilibrium structural relaxation time on the observed specific heat, the temperature dependence of the equilibrium configurational specific heat and the validity of the Vogel-Fulcher equation for the relaxation time.

Magnetoresistance (MR) in bulk samples of LaMnO₃ has been investigated by varying the Mn⁴⁺ content from 10 to 33 per cent by chemical means, without aliovalent doping. With the increase in Mn⁴⁺ content, the structure of LaMnO₃ changes first from orthorhombic to rhombohedral and then to cubic and the material becomes increasingly ferromagnetic, exhibiting a resistivity maximum akin to an insulator-metal transition atT_Peak, just below the ferromagneticT_c. The magnitude of MR is highest in the cubic sample (with 33% Mn⁴⁺) around theT_Peak, and negligible in the non-magnetic orthorhombic sample (12% Mn⁴⁺).

It is an attempt to explore non-singular cosmological solutions with non-rotating perfect fluids with p=κρ. The investigation strongly indicates that there is no solution of the above type other than already known. It is hoped that this result may be rigorously proved in future.

In this paper we report some of the important results of experimental investigations of the flicker noise near the metal-insulator (MI) transition in doped silicon single crystals. This is the first comprehensive work to study low-frequency noise in heavily doped Si over an extensive temperature range (2 K<T<500 K). The measurements of conductance fluctuations (flicker noise) were carried out in the frequency range 10⁻²<f<4 × 10¹ Hz in single crystalline Si across the MI transition by doping with phosphorous and boron. The magnitude of noise in heavily doped Si is much larger than that seen in lightly doped Si over the whole temperature range. The extensive temperature range covered allowed us to detect two distinct noise mechanisms. At low temperatures (T<100 K) universal conductance fluctuations (UCF) dominate and the spectral dependence of the noise is determined by dephasing the electron from defects with two-levels (TLS). At higher temperatures (T>200 K) the noise arises from activated defect dynamics. As the MI transition is approached, the 1/f spectral power, typical of the metallic regime, gets modified by the presence of discrete Lorentzians which arise from generation-recombination process which is the characteristic of a semiconductor.