For the first time, scientists have directly visualized the quantum process behind superconductivity, a phenomenon in which electrons pair up and allow electricity to flow with no resistance at very low temperatures.
The outcome was not what researchers anticipated.
In a study published April 15 in Physical Review Letters, scientists captured images of individual atoms forming pairs inside a specially prepared gas cooled close to absolute zero — the unreachable limit to how cold things can get. This system, known as a Fermi gas, allows researchers to replace electrons with atoms and examine superconducting behavior in a controlled setting.
After forming pairs, the atoms did not behave as expected. Instead of acting independently, the pairs moved in a coordinated pattern, with each pair’s position influenced by nearby pairs — something not predicted by the 70-year-old, Nobel-prize-winning theory of superconductivity.
“Our experiment showed that something is qualitatively missing from this theory,” says experimental research lead Tarik Yefsah of the Laboratoire Kastler Brossel at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) in Paris. Yefsah and other experimental physicists at CNRS collaborated on the new study with theoretical physicists, including Shiwei Zhang of the Simons Foundation’s Flatiron Institute.
This discovery adds a key detail to scientists’ understanding of superconductivity and may help guide efforts to develop room-temperature superconductors, a major goal that could lead to far more efficient power systems and electronic devices.
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