Bulletin of the American Physical Society
APS March Meeting 2011
Volume 56, Number 1
Monday–Friday, March 21–25, 2011; Dallas, Texas
Session Q3: The Kavli Foundation Special Symposium: Superconductivity Centennial: Future Research Opportunities |
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Sponsoring Units: DCMP DMP Chair: Zachary Fisk, University of California, Irvine Room: Ballroom A3 |
Wednesday, March 23, 2011 11:15AM - 11:51AM |
Q3.00001: Superconductivity: A Continuous Surprise or ``How I Learned to Love the Surprises'' Invited Speaker: When I was invited to give this talk, I thought I would talk about new materials, or new opportunities, or the electron-phonon interaction, or non electron phonon interactions. Then when I looked at the speakers in this symposium and the subjects that they were scheduled to talk about, I realized that they were better equipped to talk individually about each of these subjects than I was, and it was my role to introduce the subject and give a perspective on the future of research and applications in superconductivity. My experience over the past decades has been that it is very dangerous to make predictions in this field. There are many examples of our distinguished colleagues who have engaged in this practice only to be proven wrong by surprise after surprise Fortunately, this has not harmed their reputations or their courage to continue to make predictions. In this talk I will reflect on my personal experience over several decades of research in superconductivity and how my own thinking has changed. Hopefully, I will \begin{enumerate} \item Transmit a flavor of this field and stimulate other younger investigators to be adventuresome \item Prepare the audience for the talks that follow \item Motivate the following speakers to reveal their own predictions and surprises. \end{enumerate} [Preview Abstract] |
Wednesday, March 23, 2011 11:51AM - 12:27PM |
Q3.00002: Research opportunities in new superconducting materials Invited Speaker: Since the discovery of superconductivity 100 years ago, new superconducting materials have rarely successfully been designed, with almost every new superconductor being discovered serendipitously. Through the years we have developed a variety of guidelines based on observations, but some of these guidelines remain disparate - such as, reduced dimensionality seems to give rise to higher Tc but isotropic materials would be better for applications. It is encouraging to note that this is an area where physicists, chemists, and material scientists seamlessly work together without boundaries, and ideas between groups are exchanged freely. Just as the theory of superconductivity and its development has had a major impact on how we do theoretical physics, our approach, with consilience, in searching for ``better'' superconductors may change the way we do experimental physics. I will present some of our guidelines and how our approach will help to provide exciting new research opportunities in superconducting materials. [Preview Abstract] |
Wednesday, March 23, 2011 12:27PM - 1:03PM |
Q3.00003: Iron-based superconductors and relevant materials:progress and opportunity Invited Speaker: Iron, a representative magnetic element, was believed to the last constituent for emergence of superconductivity because long range magnetic ordering competes with the formation of Cooper pair requisite for superconductivity. However, once LaFeAs(O,F) with Tc=26K was discovered, many iron-pnictide (chalcogenide) superconducting materials have been found and the maximum Tc reached 56K, which is next to the high Tc cuprates exceeding MgB$_{2}$. I think there are two significances in discovery of iron-based superconductors. First, we realized that magnetic element is not a hateful enemy but a powerful friend to realize high Tc superconductors. Second it provides a large opportunity to find new high Tc materials because there exist several hundreds of layered compounds containing square lattice of transition metal cations taking tetrahedral coordination with non-oxide anions. We expect materials with higher Tc and/or novel class of superconductors would be hidden among these. To our interest, the crystal structure of 122 is the same as that of a representative heavy fermion superconductor CeCu$_{2}$T$_{2}$(T=Si,Ge). One may expect some clue to bridge these two superconducting systems would be found. What we have not to forget is a historical fact that most of ground-breaking materials including high Tc superconductors have been discovered by serendipity in the course of concentrated exploration effort. I am anticipating new material functions would be discovered as a result of concentrated material exploration with a help of theoretical modeling and advanced characterization. Iron is the most important element led to leap of civilization. I hope iron would serve as the same role in the history of superconductivity. \textit{Strike while the iron is hot}. I think this saying is still true for superconductivity research. [Preview Abstract] |
Wednesday, March 23, 2011 1:03PM - 1:39PM |
Q3.00004: Exploring electron-phonon interactions in superconductors Invited Speaker: Superconductors can be roughly assigned to two classes. The first class contains materials in which the electronic pairing induced by electron-phonon interactions is the fundamental mechanism giving rise to the superconductivity. The BCS theory, together with its extensions, explains the properties of these superconductors extremely well . The second class is all other superconductors including the cuprate, Fe based, and heavy Fermion superconductors. Again, electronic pairing appears to be evident, but there is no consensus on the correct underlying theory of the superconducting mechanism at this time. I will discuss calculations for materials in the former class and describe the progress made in explaining and predicting their superconducting properties. I will emphasize calculations of the transition temperature and discuss some suggestions for raising the maximum transition temperature for materials in this class. [Preview Abstract] |
Wednesday, March 23, 2011 1:39PM - 2:15PM |
Q3.00005: Electronic Pairing Interactions Invited Speaker: The heavy fermion, actinide, cuprate, iron-pnictide/chalcogenide and Bechgaard organic salts form a class of superconducting materials which are believed to share an electronic pairing mechanism. While the early electronic pairing interactions which were suggested involved charge fluctuations, it appears that for these materials it is the spin (and orbital) fluctuations that play a central role. Here I will discuss some of what is known about the electronic pairing interaction in this class of materials and conclude with some questions for future research. [Preview Abstract] |
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