Freezing upon heating: Formation of dynamical glass

The discovery of superconductivity and its experimental realization are two of the most important advancements in physics and engineering of the past century. Nevertheless, their statistical and dynamical characteristics have yet to be fully understood. A team of researchers at the Center for Theoretical Physics of Complex Systems, within the Institute for Basic Science (IBS, South Korea), has modeled the energy behavior of chaotic networks of superconducting elements (grains), separated by non-superconducting junctions, and discovered some unexpected statistical properties at long, but still finite time scales. Their findings are published in Physical Review Letters.