Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • News & Views
  • Published:

High-temperature superconductivity

Electrons pair themselves

Nature volume 401, pages 333–335 (1999)Cite this article

Soon the discovery of high-temperature superconductivity in copper-oxide materials will belong to a previous millennium. In the early days an explanation of this phenomenon was expected well before the next epoch, but the 1990s saw the mystery settle like an indigestible dinner at a roadside restaurant. Some new insights, such as the paper from Carbotte et al.1 on page 354 of this issue, may offer a dose of much needed relief.

Bardeen, Cooper and Schrieffer (BCS) explained superconductivity seen in conventional metals when cooled below the transition temperature, Tc, back in 1957. The essential ingredient of their theory is the interaction between freely moving electrons and the lattice of ions that form the structural basis of the solid. This interaction leads to a net attraction and pairing of electrons. Although each electron is a type of particle known as a fermion, a pair of electrons becomes a composite boson (a particle that obeys completely different quantum statistics). Superconductivity can be viewed as a condensed phase analogous to a Bose–Einstein condensate of atoms.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Buy this article

  • Purchase on Springer Link
  • Instant access to full article PDF
Buy now

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Figure 1: Absorption of a photon by a superconductor.

References

  1. Carbotte, J., Schachinger, E. & Basov, D.N. Nature 401, 354–356 (1999).

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  2. Gough, C. E. et al. Nature 326, 855–857 (1987).

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  3. Wollman, D. A. et al. Phys. Rev. Lett. 71, 2134–2137 (1993).

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  4. Tsuei, C. C. et al. Phys. Rev. Lett. 73, 593–596 (1994).

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  5. Orenstein, J. et al. in Electronic Properties of High-TcSuperconductors (ed. Kuzmany, H.) 254–259 (Springer, Berlin, 1990).

  6. Quinlan, S. M. et al. Phys. Rev. B 53, 8575–8582 (1996).

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  7. Rossat-Mignod, J. et al. Physica C 185–189, 86–92 (1991).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  8. Mook, H. A. et al. Phys. Rev. Lett. 70, 3490–3493 (1993).

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  9. Fong, H. F. et al. Phys. Rev. Lett. 75, 316–319 (1995).

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  10. Scalapino, D. J. & White, S.R. Phys. Rev. B 58, 8222–8224 (1998).

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  11. Demler, E. & Zhang, S.C. Nature 396, 733–735 (1998).

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics, University of California and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, 94720, California, USA

    Joe Orenstein

Authors
  1. Joe Orenstein
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Joe Orenstein.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Orenstein, J. Electrons pair themselves. Nature 401, 333–335 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1038/43801

Download citation

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/43801

This article is cited by

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing