Superconducting properties and materials articles within Nature

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  • Letter |

    The density of states in a two-dimensional superconductor has an energy gap that behaves analogously to that in a high-transition-temperature copper oxide superconductor as a function of charge carrier density, suggesting that such behaviour could be a general property of two-dimensional superconductivity.

    • C. Richter
    • , H. Boschker
    •  & J. Mannhart

  • Letter |

    A fundamental and previously unobserved aspect of the Josephson effect is revealed through spectroscopic measurements of the excited Andreev states in superconducting atomic contacts.

    • L. Bretheau
    • , Ç. Ö. Girit
    •  & C. Urbina

  • Letter |

    The quantum light–matter interaction between a superconducting artificial atom and squeezed vacuum reduces the transverse radiative decay rate of the atom by a factor of two, allowing the corresponding coherence time, T2, to exceed the ordinary vacuum decay limit, 2T1.

    • K. W. Murch
    • , S. J. Weber
    •  & I. Siddiqi

  • News & Views |

    A thermal effect predicted more than 40 years ago was nearly forgotten, while a related phenomenon stole the limelight. Now experimentally verified, the effect could spur the development of heat-controlling devices. See Letter p.401

    • Raymond W. Simmonds

  • Letter |

    A thermal analogue of a superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID, widely used to measure small magnetic fields) is realized, in which the flow of heat between the superconductors is dependent on the quantum phase difference between them.

    • Francesco Giazotto
    •  & María José Martínez-Pérez

  • Letter |

    Electronic nematicity, a unidirectional self-organized state that breaks the rotational symmetry of the underlying lattice, has been observed in an iron-based superconductor, BaFe2(As1−xP x )2, over a wide range of phosphorus concentration, resulting in a phase diagram similar to the pseudogap phase diagram of the copper oxides.

    • S. Kasahara
    • , H. J. Shi
    •  & Y. Matsuda

  • Letter |

    The magnetic-flux analogue to coherent Josephson tunnelling of electric charge has been observed in a strongly disordered superconducting nanowire.

    • O. V. Astafiev
    • , L. B. Ioffe
    •  & J. S. Tsai

  • News & Views |

    Twenty-five years on from its discovery, high-temperature superconductivity remains without a satisfactory explanation. The latest studies on the electronic phase diagram of copper oxide compounds reveal why this is so. See Letter p.73

    • Paul Michael Grant

  • News & Views |

    The finding that a cobalt oxide insulator's magnetism is similar to that of cuprate superconductors lends support to the popular but contentious idea that stripe-like electronic order is present in the latter materials. See Letter p.341

    • Jan Zaanen

  • Letter |

    Neutron scattering measurements of spin fluctuations in hole-doped high-Tc copper oxides have revealed an unusual 'hour-glass' feature in the momentum-resolved magnetic spectrum. There is no widely accepted explanation for this feature. One possibility is that it derives from a pattern of alternating spin and charge stripes. Many copper oxides without stripe order, however, also exhibit an hour-glass spectrum. This paper reports the observation of an hour-glass magnetic spectrum in a hole-doped antiferromagnet from outside the family of superconducting copper oxides. The system has stripe correlations and is an insulator, which means its magnetic dynamics can conclusively be ascribed to stripes. The results provide compelling evidence that the hour-glass spectrum in the copper-oxide superconductors arises from fluctuating stripes.

    • A. T. Boothroyd
    • , P. Babkevich
    •  & P. G. Freeman

  • News & Views |

    The idea of using ultracold atoms to simulate the behaviour of electrons in new kinds of quantum systems — from topological insulators to exotic superfluids and superconductors — is a step closer to becoming a reality. See Letter p.83

    • Michael Chapman
    •  & Carlos Sá de Melo

  • News & Views |

    The structure of a mineral has been validated, ending the controversy about its potential usefulness as a model of an unusual magnetic lattice. This model might provide insight into superconductivity.

    • Mark A. de Vries
    •  & Andrew Harrison

  • News & Views |

    Extensive mapping of local electronic structure in copper oxide superconductors reveals fluctuating stripe-like electron patterns that appear as a high-temperature precursor to superconductivity. See Letter p.677

    • Kathryn A. Moler

  • Letter |

    A long-standing question has been the interplay between pseudogap, which is generic to all hole doped copper oxide superconductors, and stripes, whose static form occurs in only one family of copper oxides over a narrow range of the phase diagram. This study reports observations of the spatial reorganization of electronic states with the onset of the pseudogap state at T* in the high temperature superconductor Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8+x using scanning tunnelling microscopy. The onset of the pseudogap phase coincides with the appearance of electronic patterns that have the predicted characteristics of fluctuating stripes. The experiments indicate that stripes are a consequence of pseudogap behaviour rather than its cause.

    • Colin V. Parker
    • , Pegor Aynajian
    •  & Ali Yazdani

  • News & Views |

    The discovery of predicted collective electronic behaviour in copper-oxide superconductors in the non-superconducting state provides clues to unlocking the 24-year-old mystery of high-temperature superconductivity. See Letter p.283

    • Chandra Varma

  • News |

    Successes at entangling three-circuit systems brighten the prospects for solid-state quantum computing.

    • Eugenie Samuel Reich

  • Letter |

    Quantum entanglement is a key resource for technologies such as quantum communication and computation. A major question for solid-state quantum information processing is whether an engineered system can display the three-qubit entanglement necessary for quantum error correction. A positive answer to this question is now provided. A circuit quantum electrodynamics device has been used to demonstrate deterministic production of three-qubit entangled states and the first step of basic quantum error correction.

    • L. DiCarlo
    • , M. D. Reed
    •  & R. J. Schoelkopf

  • Letter |

    The oxygen interstitials in the layers separating the superconducting CuO2 planes undergo ordering phenomena in La2CuO4+y that enhance the transition temperature (Tc). It is also known that complex systems often have a scale-invariant structural organization, but hitherto none had been found in high-Tc materials. These authors report that the ordering of oxygen interstitials in the La2O2+y spacer layers of La2CuO4+y high-Tc superconductors is characterized by a fractal distribution up to a maximum limiting size of 400 µ.

    • Michela Fratini
    • , Nicola Poccia
    •  & Antonio Bianconi

  • Letter |

    Superconductivity and magnetic order are well known in C60 compounds of the form A3C60 (where A = alkali metal). The spherical C60 molecular ions in these crystals are almost always arranged in a face-centred cubic (f.c.c.) packing, except in Cs3C60, where the known superconducting phase has a body-centred cubic (b.c.c) packing. Now the f.c.c. polymorph for Cs3C60 has been isolated; it too is superconducting, although its magnetic properties are very different to those of its b.c.c counterpart.

    • Alexey Y. Ganin
    • , Yasuhiro Takabayashi
    •  & Kosmas Prassides

  • Letter |

    The phenomenon of superconductivity continues to intrigue, and several new superconducting materials have been discovered in recent years — but in the case of organic superconductors, no new material system with a high superconducting transition temperature has been identified in the past decade. Now it has been shown that the introduction of potassium into crystals of organic molecule picene can yield superconductivity at temperatures as high as 18 K.

    • Ryoji Mitsuhashi
    • , Yuta Suzuki
    •  & Yoshihiro Kubozono

  • Letter |

    In the study of high-transition-temperature (high-Tc) copper oxide superconductors, a fundamental question is what symmetries are broken when the pseudogap phase sets in below a temperature T*. A large in-plane anisotropy of the Nernst effect is now observed in a high-Tc copper oxide superconductor that sets in precisely at T* throughout the doping phase diagram. It is concluded that the pseudogap phase is an electronic state that strongly breaks four-fold rotational symmetry.

    • R. Daou
    • , J. Chang
    •  & Louis Taillefer

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