Finding New Superconductors: The Spin-Fluctuation Gateway to High Tc and Possible Room Temperature Superconductivity

Abstract

We propose an experiment-based strategy for finding new high transition temperature superconductors that is based on the well-established spin fluctuation magnetic gateway to superconductivity in which the attractive quasiparticle interaction needed for superconductivity comes from their coupling to dynamical spin fluctuations originating in the proximity of the material to an antiferromagnetic state. We show how lessons learned by combining the results of almost three decades of intensive experimental and theoretical study of the cuprates with those found in the decade-long study of a strikingly similar family of unconventional heavy electron superconductors, the 115 materials, can prove helpful in carrying out that search. We conclude that since Tc in these materials scales approximately with the strength of the interaction, J, between the nearest neighbor local moments in their parent antiferromagnetic state, there may not be a magnetic ceiling that would prevent one from discovering a room temperature superconductor.

To appear in a special Peter Wolynes Festschrift issue of J. Phys. Chem. B and can be accessed in the journal's format at http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/jp403088e

References in corpus (4)

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• Universal Behavior and the Two-component Character of Magnetically Underdoped Cuprate Superconductors
• High-pressure spin shifts in the pseudogap regime of superconducting YBa2Cu4O8 as revealed by 17O NMR
• Magnetic excitations in Kondo liquid: Superconductivity and Hidden Magnetic Quantum Critical Fluctuations

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