Scientists discover a new type of superconductor

A scientific group from America studied the crystal lattice of strontium ruthenate (the most promising material for quantum computers) and it was found that waves propagate through the material in an extremely unusual way, which indicates a completely new type of superconductors.

Today I want to tell you about this unique discovery.

Existing types of superconductors

As you know, electrons in superconductors move in the so-called Cooper pairs. It is this symbiosis that endows the material with unique properties, one of which is the complete absence of electrical resistance.

So superconducting materials were divided (the division depends on the type of waves passing through them) into two types:

• s-wave. In such superconductors (mercury, tin, lead) in a Cooper pair, electrons have oppositely directed spins, and electrons are static with respect to the common center of mass. In other words, the pairs have zero orbital angular momentum.
• d - wave. These are high-temperature superconductors (HTSC), in such materials the paired electrons have opposite spins, but they also rotate around the resulting center of mass. Moreover, for such conductors, the orbital moment of the Cooper pairs is equal to two.
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But it turned out that there is still at least one type of superconductor.

Discovery of a new type of superconductor

Back in 1994, a unique compound was discovered - strontium ruthenate Sr2RuO4. The material was unusual in that its internal structure looked like that of classical HTSCs, but the wave component was fundamentally different.

At that time, this material was attributed to the so-called transitional type of superconductors, related to the p-wave type. Due to the fact that in this material in a Cooper pair, the electron spins have one direction, and the electron pair has an angular momentum equal to unity.

This unique discovery potentially guaranteed a breakthrough in the creation of quantum computers. Since it allowed the formation of Majorana fermions (unusual particles, which simultaneously represent their own antiparticles).

That is why for many years the material has been actively studied, as scientists were looking for confirmation of the p-wave superconductivity hypothesis of the material.

The practical discovery turned out to be more interesting than the theoretical

In another attempt to find confirmation of the theory, a group of American scientists from Cornell University (USA) conducted another experiment to study strontium ruthenate.

So the crystal of the material was studied using resonant ultrasonic spectroscopy of the highest resolution.

For this purpose, the material was cooled to an extreme temperature of 1.4 Kelvin. And then sound waves were passed through the crystal. And at this time the elastic constants were measured.

So, the results obtained simply amazed the scientists. It turns out that strontium ruthenate is a completely new type of superconductor. As it turned out, the electrons in the Cooper pair have such a complex connection that it does not fit the description with either s or d waves.

The only thing that we managed to find out exactly is that the angular momentum is equal to four, which means that the new superconductor belongs to the g-wave. None of the scientists even assumed that such superconductors could exist in principle.

The results of the experiment are astounding and the scientists plan to test other promising materials that were previously classified in the p-type group in the same way. We will wait for the results of new experiments.

And the results of this experiment, scientists have shared on the pages of the journal Nature Physics.

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