Superconductivity seen in a new light
Superconducting materials have the characteristic of letting an electric current flow without resistance. The study of superconductors with a high critical temperature discovered in the 1980s remains a very attractive research subject for physicists. Indeed, many experimental observations still lack an adequate theoretical description. Researchers from the University of Geneva (UNIGE) in Switzerland and the Technical University Munich in Germany have lifted the veil on the electronic characteristics of high-temperature superconductors. Their research, published in Nature Communications, shows that the electronic densities measured in these superconductors are a combination of two separate effects. As a result, they propose a new model that suggests the existence of two coexisting states rather than competing ones postulated for the past thirty years, a small revolution in the world of superconductivity.