Superconductivity is a fascinating phenomenon in which, below a so-called critical temperature, a material loses all its resistance to electrical currents. In certain materials, at low temperatures, all electrons are entangled in a single, macroscopic quantum state, meaning that they no longer behave as individual particles but as a collective—resulting in superconductivity. The general theory for this collective electron behavior has been known for a long time, but one family of materials, the cuprates, refuses to conform to the paradigm. They also possess the highest ambient-pressure superconducting transition temperatures known to exist. It was long thought that for these materials the mechanism that ‘glues together’ the electrons must be special, but recently the attention has shifted and now physicists investigate the non-superconducting states of cuprates, hoping to find clues to the origin of high-temperature superconductivity and its distinction from normal superconductors.
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Source: Phys.org