David Pines, SFI Co-founder in Residence, presents a quantitative model for a long-standing challenge for quantum physicists: explaining how superconductivity emerges in unconventional materials. His new paper with co-author Yi-feng Yang appears in the current issue of PNAS.
Superconductivity is an emergent quantum behavior wherein materials lose all electrical resistance at certain temperatures. Previous theories of superconductivity do not provide a simple quantitative account of how it arises in a class of materials known as "unconventional superconductors." The Pines-Yang model offers that long-sought account for superconductivity in a subset of unconventional superconductors called heavy-electron materials.
Read their paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (December 23, 2013)
Read the feature article in Phys.org (December 29, 2014)