Since the discovery of high-temperature superconductivity in copper-oxide compounds called cuprates in 1986, scientists have been trying to understand how these materials can conduct electricity without resistance at temperatures hundreds of degrees above the ultra-chilled temperatures required by conventional superconductors. Finding the mechanism behind this exotic behavior may pave the way for engineering materials that enable lossless power grids, more affordable magnetically levitated transit systems and powerful supercomputers.
Led by Moore Foundation grantee Ivan Bozovic, physicists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory and Yale University have an explanation for why the temperature at which cuprates become superconducting is so high. After growing and analyzing thousands of samples of a cuprate known as LSCO for the four elements it contains (lanthanum, strontium, copper, and oxygen), they determined that this "critical" temperature is controlled by the density of electron pairs—the number of electron pairs per unit area. This finding challenges the standard theory of superconductivity, which proposes that the critical temperature depends instead on the strength of the electron pairing interaction.
"Solving the enigma of high-temperature superconductivity has been the focus of condensed matter physics for more than 30 years," said Bozovic, a materials synthesis investigator in the foundation's EPiQS initiative. "Our experimental finding provides a basis for explaining the origin of high-temperature superconductivity in the cuprates—a basis that calls for an entirely new theoretical framework."
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