BCS theory or Bardeen–Cooper–Schrieffer theory is the first microscopic theory of superconductivity since Heike Kamerlingh Onnes's 1911 discovery. The theory describes superconductivity as a microscopic effect caused by a condensation of Cooper pairs. The theory is also used in nuclear physics to describe the pairing interaction between nucleons in an atomic nucleus.
Superconductivity is a set of physical properties observed in certain materials where electrical resistance vanishes and magnetic flux fields are expelled from the material. Any material exhibiting these properties is a superconductor. Unlike an ordinary metallic conductor, whose resistance decreases gradually as its temperature is lowered even down to near absolute zero, a superconductor has a characteristic critical temperature below which the resistance drops abruptly to zero. An electric current through a loop of superconducting wire can persist indefinitely with no power source.
Unconventional superconductors are materials that display superconductivity which does not conform to either the conventional BCS theory or Nikolay Bogolyubov's theory or its extensions.
High-temperature superconductors are operatively defined as materials that behave as superconductors at temperatures above 77 K, the boiling point of liquid nitrogen, one of the simplest coolants in cryogenics. All materials currently known to conduct at ordinary pressures become superconducting at temperatures far below ambient, and therefore require cooling. The majority of high-temperature superconductors are ceramic materials. On the other hand, Metallic superconductors usually work below 73.15 K : they are then called low-temperature superconductors. Metallic superconductors are also ordinary superconductors, since they were discovered and used before the high-temperature ones.
In physics, the Kondo effect describes the scattering of conduction electrons in a metal due to magnetic impurities, resulting in a characteristic change i.e. a minimum in electrical resistivity with temperature. The cause of the effect was first explained by Jun Kondo, who applied third-order perturbation theory to the problem to account for scattering of s-orbital conduction electrons off d-orbital electrons localized at impurities. Kondo's calculation predicted that the scattering rate and the resulting part of the resistivity should increase logarithmically as the temperature approaches 0 K. Experiments in the 1960s by Myriam Sarachik at Bell Laboratories provided the first data that confirmed the Kondo effect. Extended to a lattice of magnetic impurities, the Kondo effect likely explains the formation of heavy fermions and Kondo insulators in intermetallic compounds, especially those involving rare earth elements such as cerium, praseodymium, and ytterbium, and actinide elements such as uranium. The Kondo effect has also been observed in quantum dot systems.
A room-temperature superconductor is a material that is capable of exhibiting superconductivity at operating temperatures above 0 °C, that is, temperatures that can be reached and easily maintained in an everyday environment. As of 2020, the material with the highest accepted superconducting temperature is an extremely pressurized carbonaceous sulfur hydride with a critical transition temperature of +15°C at 267 GPa.
Philip Warren Anderson was an American theoretical physicist and Nobel laureate. Anderson made contributions to the theories of localization, antiferromagnetism, symmetry breaking, and high-temperature superconductivity, and to the philosophy of science through his writings on emergent phenomena. Anderson is also responsible for naming the field of physics that is now known as condensed matter physics.
In condensed matter physics, the Fermi surface is the surface in reciprocal space which separates occupied from unoccupied electron states at zero temperature. The shape of the Fermi surface is derived from the periodicity and symmetry of the crystalline lattice and from the occupation of electronic energy bands. The existence of a Fermi surface is a direct consequence of the Pauli exclusion principle, which allows a maximum of one electron per quantum state. The study of the Fermi surfaces of materials is called fermiology.
The Hubbard model is an approximate model used to describe the transition between conducting and insulating systems. It is particularly useful in solid-state physics. The model is named for John Hubbard.
Superconductivity is the phenomenon of certain materials exhibiting zero electrical resistance and the expulsion of magnetic fields below a characteristic temperature. The history of superconductivity began with Dutch physicist Heike Kamerlingh Onnes's discovery of superconductivity in mercury in 1911. Since then, many other superconducting materials have been discovered and the theory of superconductivity has been developed. These subjects remain active areas of study in the field of condensed matter physics.
In condensed matter physics, a pseudogap describes a state where the Fermi surface of a material possesses a partial energy gap, for example, a band structure state where the Fermi surface is gapped only at certain points. The term pseudogap was coined by Nevill Mott in 1968 to indicate a minimum in the density of states at the Fermi level, N(EF), resulting from Coulomb repulsion between electrons in the same atom, a band gap in a disordered material or a combination of these. In the modern context pseudogap is a term from the field of high-temperature superconductivity which refers to an energy range which has very few states associated with it. This is very similar to a true 'gap', which is an energy range that contains no allowed states. Such gaps open up, for example, when electrons interact with the lattice. The pseudogap phenomenon is observed in a region of the phase diagram generic to cuprate high-temperature superconductors, existing in underdoped specimens at temperatures above the superconducting transition temperature.
In solid-state physics, an energy gap is an energy range in a solid where no electron states exist, i.e. an energy range where the density of states vanishes.
In solid-state physics, the t-J model is a model first derived in 1977 from the Hubbard model by Józef Spałek to explain antiferromagnetic properties of the Mott insulators and taking into account experimental results about the strength of electron-electron repulsion in this materials. The model consider the materials as a lattice with atoms in the knots (sites) and just one or two external electrons moving among them, like in the basic Hubbard model. That difference is in supposing electrons being strongly-correlated, that means electrons are very sensible to reciprocal coulombic repulsion, and so are more constrained to avoid occupying lattice's sites already occupied by another electron. In the basic Hubbard model, the repulsion, indicated with U, can be small and also null, and electrons are freer to jump from one site to another. In the t-J model, instead of U, there is the parameter J, function of the ratio t/U, so the name.
Cuprate superconductors are a family of high-temperature superconducting materials made of layers of copper oxides (CuO2) alternating with layers of other metal oxides, which act as charge reservoirs. At ambient pressure, cuprate superconductors are the highest temperature superconductors known. However, the mechanism by which superconductivity occurs is still not understood.
The slave boson method is a technique for dealing with models of strongly correlated systems, providing a method to second-quantize valence fluctuations within a restrictive manifold of states. In the 1960s the physicist John Hubbard introduced an operator, now named the "Hubbard operator" to describe the creation of an electron within a restrictive manifold of valence configurations. Consider for example, a rare earth or actinide ion in which strong Coulomb interactions restrict the charge fluctuations to two valence states, such as the Ce4+(4f0) and Ce3+ (4f1) configurations of a mixed-valence cerium compound. The corresponding quantum states of these two states are the singlet state and the magnetic state, where is the spin. The fermionic Hubbard operators that link these states are then
Piers Coleman is a British-born theoretical physicist, working in the field of theoretical condensed matter physics. Coleman is Professor of Physics at Rutgers University in New Jersey and at Royal Holloway, University of London.
Dynamical mean-field theory (DMFT) is a method to determine the electronic structure of strongly correlated materials. In such materials, the approximation of independent electrons, which is used in density functional theory and usual band structure calculations, breaks down. Dynamical mean-field theory, a non-perturbative treatment of local interactions between electrons, bridges the gap between the nearly free electron gas limit and the atomic limit of condensed-matter physics.
In condensed matter physics, a quantum spin liquid is a phase of matter that can be formed by interacting quantum spins in certain magnetic materials. Quantum spin liquids (QSL) are generally characterized by their long-range quantum entanglement, fractionalized excitations, and absence of ordinary magnetic order.
Ganapathy Baskaran is an Indian theoretical physicist, known for his work on condensed matter physics and strongly correlated materials. Baskaran is an Emeritus Professor of physics at the Institute of Mathematical Sciences in Chennai, India and a Distinguished Research Chair at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Canada.
Thomas Maurice Rice is an Irish theoretical physicist specializing in condensed matter physics.
