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Superconductivity mystery turns 25

In 1994, an unconventional form of superconductivity was detected in strontium ruthenate. The discovery has shed light on the mechanism of unconventional superconductivity at high temperatures.
  1. N. Peter Armitage

    1. N. Peter Armitage is in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland 21218, USA.

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Superconductivity is an effect in which a material’s electrical resistance vanishes and any magnetic field is expelled below a transition temperature. Despite the remarkable phenomenology, this behaviour is actually quite common: almost half the elements in the periodic table are superconductors1, albeit at temperatures near or below the extremely low one at which helium gas liquefies (about 4 kelvin). Since Nobel-prizewinning work in the late 1950s, we have had a successful theory2 of superconductivity in these conventional systems. Electrons bind into ‘Cooper pairs’ that have isotropic (direction-independent) properties through an interaction with vibrations of surrounding ions. Over the past 40 years, researchers have looked for unconventional superconductors that involve different pairing interactions, such as magnetic ones. In 1994, Maeno et al.3 reported one of the clearest examples of unconventional superconductivity, in strontium ruthenate near 1 K.

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Nature 576, 386-387 (2019)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-019-03734-7

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