Superconductivity - a quantum phenomenon in which metals below a certain temperature develop flow of current with no loss or resistance - is one of the most exciting problems in physics, which has resulted in investments worldwide of enormous brain power and resources since its discovery a little over a century ago. Many prominent theorists, Nobel laureates among them, have proposed theories for new classes of superconducting materials discovered several decades later, followed by teams of experimentalists working furiously to provide solid evidence for these theories. More than 100,000 research papers have been published on the new materials.
One such theory began with a proposal in 1989 by Chandra Varma while at Bell Laboratories, NJ, and now a distinguished professor of physics and astronomy at the University of California, Riverside. At UC Riverside, he further developed the theory and proposed experiments to confirm or refute it. That theory has now been experimentally proven to be a consistent theory by physicists in China and Korea.
The experimental results, published in Science Advances today (March 4), now allow for a clear discrimination of theories of high-temperature superconductivity, favoring one and ruling others out. The research paper is titled "Quantitative determination of pairing interactions for high-temperature superconductivity in cuprates."
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