Friday, April 11, 2008

No "Glue" For Cuprate Superconductors?

There are finally some startling evidence that points to the very unconventional nature of the cuprate superconductors. A paper just published in Science[1], heading by Ali Yazdani, has found that while there are coupling between the electrons and a bosonic mode, this coupling may not be responsible at all for superconductivity.

You can read a review of this at the Science Daily website. This discovery certainly is consistent with what Phil Anderson has been trying to push. It also could mean that the "kink" in the ARPES spectrum that I've mentioned may be another red herring that isn't directly connected to the superconducting mechanism.

But as always, this isn't the first time something of this nature has occurred in the study of high-Tc superconductors, to later turn out to be insufficient in formulating a theory of these material. So to say that this is still a controversial (in terms of interpreting what it means theoretically) result is to put it mildly.

Zz.

[1] A.N. Pasupathy et al., Science v.320, p.196 (2008).

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