Topic
A quantum state in certain materials where electrical resistance vanishes and magnetic fields are expelled below a critical temperature.
CIC nanoGUNE and CiQUS researchers report in Nature that spin-1 triangulene chains couple to a superconductor only at odd lengths. The evidence is tunnelling spectroscopy, which shows the coupling switches with length but not whether the chains would work as qubits.
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NIMS researchers found vortices in an ultrathin superconductor move over 1,000 times more easily along one-atom-high steps than across them. Temperature and magnetic field tune the effect, and MANA says it could eventually help build lower-energy superconducting electronics.
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Max Planck physicists used picosecond current pulses to probe a superconductor's depairing limit, a ceiling that DC transport measurements cannot reach. Niobium nitride and a yttrium barium copper oxide material failed differently under the pulses, a contrast the researchers tie to gap symmetry.
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University of Illinois physicists report the first direct evidence that pair density waves in uranium ditelluride persist above its superconducting transition. If that holds, Cooper pairs in this metal form before it superconducts, unlike in conventional superconductors.
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Illinois physicists report the first direct evidence that pair density waves in uranium ditelluride outlive superconductivity, as a 2007 theory predicted. If the result holds, electrons in this metal pair up before superconductivity sets in, though so far the evidence covers only one material.
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IISER Bhopal physicists report YbSb2 as the first type I superconductor shown to break time-reversal symmetry. Every earlier case was type II, so the extension to a new class of superconductor rests for now on one muon study that its authors call evidence.
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Physicists at the University of Science and Technology of China lifted six-layer NbSe2's transition temperature by up to 5.4% inside a terahertz dark cavity. The Nature paper suggests a superconductor can be tuned through its surroundings alone, so far shown in one ultrathin compound.
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Max Planck researchers drove type-II superconductors past their DC critical current by applying current for only a few picoseconds. Vortices barely move in that time, so the pulses probe an intrinsic depairing limit that steady currents struggle to reach.
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In PNAS, Kyle Shen's Cornell group dosed thin films with cesium and measured them without regrowing the sample, and the dome tracked imperfections in the crystal lattice more closely than the electron count.
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Screening the Coulomb interaction killed superconductivity in magic-angle graphene outright, which is strong evidence that the electrons do the pairing. It killed the correlated insulators too, narrowing the mechanism debate but not settling it.
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Researchers report the first case of engineered vacuum fluctuations raising NbSe2's transition temperature. The gain is small; the frequency dependence is the part worth arguing about.
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