A Road Towards High Temperature Superconductors
Abstract
The central issue in trying to make useful high temperature superconductors is obviously to discover superconductivity at higher temperatures. But there is also another issue, not less important: how to make such a superconductor a practical one. It should be recalled that the main problem with the currently available high Tc cuprates has only been partly their limited critical temperature: it has also been their insufficient performance under ac currents and in the presence of strong magnetic fields. The first part of this project deals with this question. It turns out that considerable progress in the behavior of the cuprates under applied fields can be made by using an unconventional pinning mechanism directly based on the Bond Contraction Pairing (BCP) mechanism proposed by Deutscher and de Gennes. In the second part a new mechanism for superconductivity that we may have uncovered in enhanced Tc granular Aluminum films. It turns out that free spins are present in these films, and that their local fluctuations may provide a retarded pairing mechanism. This mechanism may also be present in other not so well understood superconductors such as Kondo lattices. During this research period a very successful effort to show what superconductivity can do to the public at large. Our videos on Quantum Levitation and Quantum locking have been seen by more than 9 million people the world over, possibly the largest number ever reached by any video on High Tc. Our post doc Dr. Boaz Almog was heavily involved in this effort.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Aug 01, 2013
- Accession Number
- ADA583975
Entities
People
- Guy Deutscher
Organizations
- Tel Aviv University