Development of the Relaxation Method of Specific Heat for Measurements at MiliKelvin Temperatures and High Magnetic Fields

摘要

During this period of time we have made a strong strife to further develop the specific heat method for very low temperatures and the highest accessible fields. The specific heat is the most important probe that provides the most basic information on low temperature sates of solids. It is of particular importance to strongly correlated electron systems and heavy fermions, whose main hallmark is strongly enhanced low temperature specific heat. The discovery of non-Fermi liquid behavior in f-electron systems, manifesting itself as divergent C/T (specific heat divided by temperature) at T=0, necessitated accurate measurement of the specific heat to the lowest accessible temperatures. Finally, it has been shown that external magnetic field is the most appropriate and readily available parameter that can tune a physical system to a quantum critical point.