Despite decades of intense theoretical, experimental and computational effort, a microscopic theory of high-temperature superconductivity is not yet established. Eight researchers share their contributions to the search for a better understanding of unconventional superconductivity and their hopes for the future of the field.
This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution
Access options
Access Nature and 54 other Nature Portfolio journals
Get Nature+, our best-value online-access subscription
$29.99 / 30 days
cancel any time
Subscribe to this journal
Receive 12 digital issues and online access to articles
$99.00 per year
only $8.25 per issue
Buy this article
- Purchase on Springer Link
- Instant access to full article PDF
Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout
References
Bok, J. et al. Quantitative determination of the pairing interactions for high temperature superconductivity in cuprates. Sci. Adv. 2, e1501329 (2016).
Lee, W. et al. Spectroscopic fingerprint of charge order melting driven by quantum fluctuations in a cuprate. Nat. Phys. 17, 53–57 (2021).
Osborne, I., Paiva, T. & Trivedi, N. Fermi-surface reconstruction in the repulsive Fermi−Hubbard model. Preprint at https://arxiv.org/abs/2001.07197 (2020).
Sensarma, R., Randeria, M. & Trivedi, N. Can one determine the underlying Fermi surface in the superconducting state of strongly correlated superconductors? Phys. Rev. Lett. 98, 027004 (2007).
Anderson, P. W. & Haldane, D. The symmetries of fermion fluids at low dimensions. J. Stat. Phys. 103, 425 (2001).
Huang, E., La Nave, G. & Phillips, P. W. Doped Mott insulators break Z2 symmetry of a Fermi liquid: stability of strongly coupled fixed points. Preprint at https://arxiv.org/abs/2103.03256 (2021).
Phillips, P. W., Yeo, L. & Huang, E. Exact theory for superconductivity in a doped Mott insulator. Nat. Phys. 16, 1175–1180 (2020).
Rau, J. G., Lee, E. K.-H. & Kee, H.-Y. Generic spin model for the honeycomb iridates beyond the Kitaev limit. Phys. Rev. Lett. 112, 077204 (2014).
Peotta, S. & Törmä, P. Superfluidity in topologically nontrivial flat bands. Nat. Commun. 6, 8944 (2015).
Drozdov, A. P., Eremets, M. I., Troyan, I. A., Ksenofontov, V. & Shylin, S. I. Conventional superconductivity at 203 K at high pressures. Nature 525, 73−76 (2015).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Contributions
Xingjiang Zhou is a professor and the Director of the National Lab for Superconductivity at the Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences. He works on developing high-resolution laser-based angle-resolved photoemission systems and on studying the electronic structure and superconductivity mechanism of unconventional superconductors.
Wei-Sheng Lee is a principal investigator and staff scientist in the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. His research interest is to understand and control the collective behaviours of quantum materials by using and innovating novel X-ray scattering techniques in synchrotron and X-ray free-electron laser facilities.
Masatoshi Imada is a fellow at Toyota Physical and Chemical Research Institute, a research professor at Waseda University as well as a professor emeritus at the University of Tokyo. He works on theoretical and computational physics approaches to correlated electron physics, including high-temperature superconductors, Mott transitions and exotic magnetism.
Nandini Trivedi is a professor in the Department of Physics at the Ohio State University. Her research focuses on the role of strong interactions and topology in creating new emergent phases in quantum matter, such as quantum spin liquids, with non-classical quantum entanglement.
Philip Phillips is a professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He works extensively on strongly interacting systems, primarily high-temperature superconductivity and strange metals, and applies leading ideas at the interface with high-energy physics, such as gauge−gravity duality and unparticles, to such problems.
Hae-Young Kee is a professor of Physics at the University of Toronto, a Canada Research Chair in Theory of Quantum Materials, and a fellow of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research in Quantum Materials. She specializes in complex quantum materials, including quantum spin liquids, topological phases, high-temperature superconductors, and frustrated magnets.
Päivi Törmä is a professor at Aalto University, Finland. Her research focuses on many-body quantum theory, in particular, superconductivity and superfluidity, as well as experimental research on Bose−Einstein condensation and lasing phenomena in nanophotonics.
Mikhail Eremets is group leader at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry, Mainz, Germany. He received the James C. McGroddy Prize in 2020, Bridgman Award AIRAPT in 2017 and the Ugo Fano Gold Medal in 2015. His research focuses on metallic hydrogen and high-temperature superconductivity.
Corresponding authors
Ethics declarations
Competing interests
The authors declare no competing interests.
Additional information
Publisher’s note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Zhou, X., Lee, WS., Imada, M. et al. High-temperature superconductivity. Nat Rev Phys 3, 462–465 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s42254-021-00324-3
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s42254-021-00324-3
This article is cited by
-
Observing dynamical phases of BCS superconductors in a cavity QED simulator
Nature (2024)
-
Single-photon detection using high-temperature superconductors
Nature Nanotechnology (2023)
-
Perspective: nanoscale electric sensing and imaging based on quantum sensors
Quantum Frontiers (2023)
-
Spin-triplet pairing induced by near-neighbor attraction in the extended Hubbard model for cuprate chain
Communications Physics (2022)
-
Observation of Cooper pairs in a mesoscopic two-dimensional Fermi gas
Nature (2022)
