Initially regarded as a scientific curiosity upon its discovery in 1911 by Heike Kamerlingh Onnes, superconductivity has provided physicists with numerous theoretical challenges and experimental surprises. From the development of Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) theory at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in 1957 to the discovery of high-temperature superconducting cuprate ceramics in 1987, superconductivity continues to command attention for its scientific importance as well as its potential applications.
Today, high-temperature superconductivity is one of the biggest unsolved problems in condensed matter physics. Researchers are continuing Illinois' strong tradition of breakthrough discoveries in this field: Illinois physicists have recently uncovered a key connection between symmetry and Mott physics (the physics underlying high-temperature superconductors). These theoretical findings by principal investigator and Illinois Physics Professor Philip Phillips, Illinois Mathematics Research Professor Gabriele La Nave, and Illinois Physics postdoctoral researcher Edwin Huang, published March 21, 2022, in the journal Nature Physics, represent a big step toward understanding high-temperature superconductivity.
To read more, click here.