Room Temperature Superconductors: What Will it Mean?

Recent experiments by "a French-German team of experimental scientists, led by Philippe Bourges of the Commissariat à l'Energie Atomique, France", appear to verify a theory of high temperature superconductivity by UCR physicist Chandra Varma.

Varma's initial theory, which he proposed in 1989 when he was at Bell Laboratories, stated the radical idea that high temperature superconductivity and related phenomena occur in certain materials because quantum-mechanical fluctuations in these materials increase as temperature decreases. Usually such fluctuations, which determine the properties of all matter in the universe, decrease as temperature decreases.

Varma's theory did not explain the nature of the fluctuations; he accomplished this in a theory he proposed in 1996, while still at Bell Labs, in which he noted that in copper oxide materials, also known as cuprates, superconductivity is associated with the formation of a new state of matter in which electric current loops form spontaneously, going from copper to oxygen atoms and back to copper. His theory concluded that the quantum-mechanical fluctuations are the fluctuations of these current loops. Physicists consider these fluctuations in the current loops to be fluctuations of time.

Bourges's group directly observed the current loops in experiments involving the diffraction of polarized neutrons. In these experiments a beam of neutrons changes direction as well as the direction of its magnetization in a manner that is closely related to the geometrical arrangement of the current loops inside the material in which the beam is made to pass. More at Eurekalert.

"Physicists consider these fluctuations in the current loops to be fluctuations of time." This is a provocative statement, left unexplained. The research described certainly appears to delve into some profound quantum properties of certain forms of matter, cuprates. These experiments themselves will of course require verification and refinement.

Room temperature superconductivity is a revolutionary concept yet to be realized. If it is achieved, remarkable technological feats would certainly follow. Anyone who has read Ringworld by Larry Niven will have developed a sense of wonder at the possibilities. Much higher efficiencies in electrical generation, transmission, and utilisation would just be the bare beginning.

What is more fascinating to me than the incredible technologies from the use of room temperature superconductivity, is the deeper level of understanding of quantum forces of matter, and perhaps time. Learning to devise unique structures of matter that best take advantage of quantum characteristics for superconductivity, for quantum computing, and for a number of other techniques for which quantum devices might be ideally suited, will require a deeper level of understanding in solid state physics.