Superconductivity describes the state of certain materials when they conduct electric currents without any resistance. For superconductivity to develop, these materials generally have to be cooled to temperatures below roughly –140 °C, depending on the material. The family of materials that requires the least amount of cooling is known as cuprate superconductors. These compounds are therefore technologically interesting, but scientists are still working to understand the fundamental mechanism underlying superconductivity in these materials. In fact, determining what makes cuprate superconductors tick is one of the grand challenges in condensed-matter physics.
Now, an international research team, led by Yuhki Kohsaka and Hidenori Takagi from the RIKEN Advanced Science Institute, Wako, has provided fresh perspectives on the behavior of these systems (“Visualization of the emergence of the pseudogap state and the evolution to superconductivity in a lightly hole-doped Mott insulator”).
via nanowerk
Image: This scanning-tunneling-spectroscopy image of Ca2-xNaxCuO2Cl2 shows the merging of
clusters (in green and yellow) where the so-called pseudogap state has developed.
(Image: Yuhki Kohsaka, RIKEN Advanced Science Institute)
