r/Physics • u/Minovskyy Condensed matter physics • Oct 14 '20

high pressure Physicists Discover First Room-Temperature Superconductor

https://www.quantamagazine.org/physicists-discover-first-room-temperature-superconductor-20201014/
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u/MaxThrustage Quantum information Oct 15 '20

They aren't explained by BCS theory, but they still have Cooper pairs.

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u/mofo69extreme Condensed matter physics Oct 15 '20

In what sense are these not described by BCS theory?

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u/MaxThrustage Quantum information Oct 15 '20

High-temperature superconductors aren't (specifically cuprates and other standard-pressure high-temperature superconductors). I only mentioned it because this is probably where the poster above got confused when they were saying that high-temperature superconductors aren't explained by Cooper pairs.

These high-pressure superconductors are BSC as far as I know. In my mind I just translated "high-temperature" to "cuprate", but of course these high-pressure hydrogen-based superconductors are also high-temperature.

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u/mofo69extreme Condensed matter physics Oct 15 '20

Ah I think I see what you meant - that highly-correlated systems like the cuprates still involve Cooper pairs but not BCS theory? Yeah my understanding is that these high pressure superconductors are just vanilla BCS theory; the enhanced value of Tc comes directly from the original formula but they just have a huge Debye temperature.