Editor's Summary

13 December 2007

Superconductivity's glue

Perhaps the most debated current issue in the field of high-temperature superconductivity is the microscopic origin of the superconducting 'glue' that binds electrons into superconducting pairs. The leading contenders are lattice vibrations (phonons) and spin excitations, with the additional possibility of pairing without mediators. Niestemski et al. report spatially resolved, reproducible spectroscopy of the electron-doped superconductor known as PLCCO that reveal a collective mode in the material's electronic excitations at 10.5 2.5 meV. This is consistent with an electronic origin of the mode — and possibly the superconducting 'glue' — consistent with the involvement of spin-excitations rather than phonons.

Letter: A distinct bosonic mode in an electron-doped high-transition-temperature superconductor

F. C. Niestemski, S. Kunwar, S. Zhou, Shiliang Li, H. Ding, Ziqiang Wang, Pengcheng Dai & V. Madhavan

doi:10.1038/nature06430

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