A Nature article reflecting on the 25-year history of high-temperature superconductivity notes the seminal contributions of two SFI Science Board members, David Pines and Philip Anderson, and explores why physicists still can’t agree on the phenomenon's underlying theory.
After the first paper describing high-temperature superconductivity was published in 1986, the article recalls, the physicists who studied it were thrust into the limelight as the public imagined the possibilities of a material that conducted energy efficiently and cheaply.
Twenty-five years later, the promised applications of high-temperature superconductors, such as levitating trains and lossless power lines -- or even a complete theory explaining how high-temperature superconductivity works -- remain the stuff of fantasies.
Most physicists endorse one of two main theories: Anderson’s "resonating-valence-bond theory" proposed in 1987, and the "spin fluctuation theory" proposed in 1991 by Los Alamos scientist Alexander Balatsky, the University of Edinburgh's Philippe Monthoux, and Pines.
Though some have tried to reconcile the nearly 200,000 published papers on superconductivity, no complex theory exists.
Anderson is a professor emeritus of condensed-matter physics at Princeton University. Pines is a professor emeritus of physics at the University of Illinois-Urbana.
Read the Nature article (July 21, 2011, free subscription required)