Study reveals key signature of superconducting transition (IMAGE)
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Experiments at SLAC and Stanford revealed a key signature of the superconducting transition – the point where a material shifts from its normal state to a state where it can conduct electricity with zero loss. They used beams of light (coming in from the right in this illustration) to eject electrons from a cuprate superconductor and then measured the energies of the ejected electrons (center). These precise, high-res measurements showed that the superconducting transition, where electrons pair up and condense into a sort of electron soup, takes place in two distinct steps and at two different temperatures in these materials, capping 15 years of scientific detective work aimed at getting a detailed understanding of this transition.
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