New findings from an international collaboration led by Canadian scientists may eventually lead to a theory of how superconductivity initiates at the atomic level, a key step in understanding how to harness the potential of materials that could provide lossless energy storage, levitating trains and ultra-fast supercomputers.
Professor David Hawthorn, Professor Michel Gingras, doctoral student Andrew Achkar, and post-doctoral fellow Dr. Zhihao Hao from University of Waterloo's Department of Physics and Astronomy have experimentally shown that electron clouds in superconducting materials can snap into an aligned and directional order called nematicity.
"It has become apparent in the past few years that the electrons involved in superconductivity can form patterns, stripes or checkerboards, and exhibit different symmetries - aligning preferentially along one direction," said Professor Hawthorn. "These patterns and symmetries have important consequences for superconductivity - they can compete, coexist or possibly even enhance superconductivity. "
Their results, published today in the prestigious journal Science, present the most direct experimental evidence to date of electronic nematicity as a universal feature in cuprate high-temperature superconductors.
"In this study, we identify some unexpected alignment of the electrons - a finding that is likely generic to the high temperature superconductors and in time may turn out be a key ingredient of the problem," said Professor Hawthorn.
Nematicity in stripe-ordered cuprates probed via resonant x-ray scattering (DOI: 10.1126/science.aad1824)
(Score: 2) by gnuman on Saturday February 06 2016, @05:42PM
I'd say, OK and so?
This stuff looks like normal research. Better understanding of superconductivity is important. General theories of how to make a superconductor have been elusive, to say the least. But this paper probably should not be mentioned more in general media than a blurb in Science or Nature. There is not going to be many comments about it since this stuff is "dry" and it's only really relevant and interesting to the superconducting research crowd.
Now, once a theory exists that allows for manufacture of high temperature superconductors that can carry 10,000A of current, then that is front page news. But until then, this is not that interesting to people outside the field.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 07 2016, @06:36AM
But this paper probably should not be mentioned more in general media than a blurb in Science or Nature.
You do realize that the paper was mentioned (at least the links in TFS) by the University of Waterloo (members of their faculty led the research) and Science. does that mean you consider SN to be a "General Media" site?
(Score: 1) by Freebirth Toad on Sunday February 07 2016, @10:18PM
Anything published in Science is probably worthwhile science, but not everything published there will be interesting to Soylent's readers. I find the criterion that "someone in this community finds it interesting" to provide useful filter. Just because there aren't a lot of comments, doesn't make it uninteresting. I for one support the suggestion to add some way to "upvote" stories, so we can show our appreciation for them even when we don't have any useful comments to make.