Superconductors tagged posts

This is a conceptual image of spin current flow in a superconductor. Credit: Jason Robinson

Researchers have shown that certain superconductors – materials that carry electrical current with zero resistance at very low temperatures – can also carry currents of ‘spin’. The successful combination of superconductivity and spin could lead to a revolution in high-performance computing, by dramatically reducing energy consumption.

Spin is a particle’s intrinsic angular momentum, and is normally carried in non-superconducting, non-magnetic materials by individual electrons. Spin can be ‘up’ or ‘down’, and for any given material, there is a maximum length that spin can be carried...

Magnetic order in (Sr,Na)Fe2As2: The crystal structure contains planes of iron atoms (shown as red spheres). Half the iron sites have a magnetization (shown as red arrows), which points either up or down, but the other half have zero magnetization. This shows that the magnetism results from the constructive and destructive interference of two magnetization waves, a clear sign that the magnetic electrons are itinerant, which means they are not confined to a single site. The same electrons are responsible for the superconductivity at lower temperature. Credit: Image courtesy of DOE/Argonne National Laboratory

Scientists have discovered only half the atoms in some iron-based superconductors are magnetic, providing the first conclusive demonstration of the wave-like properties of metallic magn...

Superconducting currents during reading various states of the memory cell are shown. The greater current the larger arrow. Credit: Authors of the study

Golubov et al have proposed creating basic memory cells based on quantum effects in “sandwiches” of a superconductor – dielectric (or other insulating material), which were predicted in the 1960s by the British physicist Brian Josephson. The electrons in these “sandwiches” (they are called “Josephson junctions”) are able to tunnel from one layer of a superconductor to another, passing through the dielectric like balls passing through a perforated wall.

“With the operational function that we have proposed in these memory cells, there will be no need for time-consuming magnetization and demagnetization processes...