Superconductivity and Magnetism in Actinide Metals

Some years ago, it had become customary to speak of f-band superconductors. Behind these words, there was the assumption that narrow f-bands might give rise to f level, or f band, polarization  

It has now become apparent that f-band superconductors can be understood in a normal way, like d-band ones we have just to think about density of states, bandwidth lattice unstabilities and electron correlations to interpret it. This was clearly summarized by Smith after the discovery of superconductivity of Pa and Am. Superconductivity of Am is made by the J = 0 ground state of its six 5 f electrons as was stressed by Johansson , this could also be the case for stabilized trivalent europium metal. The importance of lattice instabilities (like in A-15 high Tc superconductors) was put forward by Fournier who showed that the very large 6T/8p slope for U was mainly due to a very targe change in the electron-phonon coupling associated with the low temperature phase transition. 

the occurence of superconductivity and magnetism along the actinide series is now fairly well understood. 

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