New result in high temp superconductivity

[PAllen]

I don’t seem to see discussion of this result on PF, so I invite such:

https://arxiv.org/abs/1704.07685

This suggests the possibility no new theory beyond BCS is necessary.

I’m interested especially in comments by members who work in this or related fields.

 

[Buzz Bloom]

BCS

Hi Paul:

What does the acronym BCS stand for?

Regards,
Buzz

 

[PAllen]

Hi Paul:

What does the acronym BCS stand for?

Regards,
Buzz

Bardeen-Cooper-Scrieffer, the three who explained traditional superconductivity winning a Nobel prize for it (note that Feynman, who helped explain superfluidity, tried mightily to solve superconductivity, but failed). It is a standard acronym. Since high temp superconductors were first investigated, it has been generally assumed that they need a new theory because key features of the BCS model are missing. This paper reports a measurement that the most characteristic feature of this model is present but disguised, and that there is reason to believe that no new theory is needed. In my view, this is a remarkable result and claim. But this is way outside my expertise. I was hoping people here who know much more about this could comment on the paper’s plausibility and what the judgment of other experts is. If validated, this paper would resolve a decades long mystery in condensed matter physics. I note this paper is published in one of the most reputable peer reviewed journals.

 

[ZapperZ]

I've been out of high-Tc research for a while, so I'm not up to speed on many of these. I did tunneling spectroscopy on these cuprates, so the technique is familiar to me, but I'm not well-verse in the theoretical analysis.

I think the issue here is whether something like Anderson's RVB description or the BCS-like description is still valid for the cuprates is still not settled even with this result. It seldom is with just one set of experiment. When I was analyzing my tunneling and ARPES data, we definitely were assuming the presence of quasiparticles and coupling to some bosonic mode that is the source of the Cooper pairing. In many camps, this is often considered to be a BCS-like analysis. So to read a paper like this isn't a surprise to me.

Zz.

 

[PAllen]

Here is positive commentary on this paper from other researchers:

https://physics.aps.org/articles/v10/129