<story><title>Superconductor news: What’s claimed, and how strong the evidence seems to be</title><url>https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/breaking-superconductor-news</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mmastrac</author><text>This is an extremely useful summarization of the original paper.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; The authors believe that the modified&amp;#x2F;strained structure of their material creates a large number of “quantum wells” between particular lead atoms and the adjacent oxygens of the phosphate groups bound to them, in effect making a two-dimensional “electron gas”. They propose that electron tunneling between these quantum wells, which are between 3.7 and 6.5 Ångstroms apart, is the superconducting mechanism. I am not enough of a solid-state physicist to judge this proposal, but the authors are making a detailed mechanistic claim that is subject to experimental proof, which is very good to see, and and they adduce a good deal of data to back it up (x-ray diffraction, EPR, and more). And they demonstrate the behaviors that a superconductor should have, such as the Meissner effect (expulsion of a magnetic field), sudden resistivity changes at a critical temperature (bizarrely high though that is in this case), current-voltage (I-V) plots at different temperatures and under different magnetic field strengths, etc. If these data reproduce, the superconductivity of this material seems beyond doubt.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>akjssdk</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t think the actual proposed superconductivity mechanism is the relevant part of this paper. It is much easier to prove that this is superconducting than to prove why. And in a sense it is a bit less relevant. Although developing a working theory for room temperature is also probably worth a Nobel prize, so I am willing to bet some theorists are also running to their blackboards as we speak.</text></comment>
<story><title>Superconductor news: What’s claimed, and how strong the evidence seems to be</title><url>https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/breaking-superconductor-news</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mmastrac</author><text>This is an extremely useful summarization of the original paper.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; The authors believe that the modified&amp;#x2F;strained structure of their material creates a large number of “quantum wells” between particular lead atoms and the adjacent oxygens of the phosphate groups bound to them, in effect making a two-dimensional “electron gas”. They propose that electron tunneling between these quantum wells, which are between 3.7 and 6.5 Ångstroms apart, is the superconducting mechanism. I am not enough of a solid-state physicist to judge this proposal, but the authors are making a detailed mechanistic claim that is subject to experimental proof, which is very good to see, and and they adduce a good deal of data to back it up (x-ray diffraction, EPR, and more). And they demonstrate the behaviors that a superconductor should have, such as the Meissner effect (expulsion of a magnetic field), sudden resistivity changes at a critical temperature (bizarrely high though that is in this case), current-voltage (I-V) plots at different temperatures and under different magnetic field strengths, etc. If these data reproduce, the superconductivity of this material seems beyond doubt.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jpmattia</author><text>&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;They propose that electron tunneling between these quantum wells, which are between 3.7 and 6.5 Ångstroms apart, is the superconducting mechanism.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;That is a very strange explanation. As someone who has done a decent amount of solid-state physics work, I would expect the explanation to involve a mechanism for pairing of electrons. Mere tunneling between quantum wells has been a staple since the &amp;quot;metamaterials&amp;quot; of the 80s and 90s.&lt;p&gt;That said, the measured curves do not lie, and I haven&amp;#x27;t kept up with the field. So I&amp;#x27;m all ears (and very much hoping the superconducting revolution is upon us!)</text></comment>