'Long-awaited explanation' for mysterious effects in high-temperature superconductors

A German-French research team has constructed a new model that explains how the so-called pseudogap state forms in high-temperature superconductors. The calculations predict two coexisting electron orders. Below a certain temperature, superconductors lose their electrical resistance and can conduct electricity without loss. "It is not to be excluded that the new pseudogap theory also provides the long-awaited explanation for why, in contrast to conventional metallic superconductors, certain ceramic copper oxide bonds lose their electrical resistance at such unusually high temperatures", say Prof. Dr. Konstantin Efetov and Dr. Hendrik Meier of the Chair of Theoretical Solid State Physics at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum. They obtained the findings in close cooperation with Dr. Catherine Pépin from the Institute for Theoretical Physics in Saclay near Paris. The team reports in the journal Nature Physics.