The history of superconductivity, the property exhibited by certain substances of lacking electrical resistance at temperatures close to absolute zero, began at the end of the 19th century and culminated in Heike Kamerlingh Onnes's 1911 discovery. The theory surrounding the property of superconductivity was further developed over the course of the 20th century. Electrical resistance is a measure of the degree to which an electrical component opposes the passage of current. ... Absolute zero is the lowest possible temperature where nothing could be colder, and no heat energy remains in a substance. ... Alternative meaning: Nineteenth Century (periodical) (18th century — 19th century — 20th century — more centuries) As a means of recording the passage of time, the 19th century was that century which lasted from 1801-1900 in the sense of the Gregorian calendar. ... Heike Kamerlingh Onnes (September 21, 1853 – February 21, 1926) was a Dutch physicist. ... A magnet levitating above a high-temperature superconductor, cooled with liquid nitrogen. ...

Exploring ultra-cold phenomena

James Dewar initiated research into electrical resistance at low-temperatures. Zygmunt Florenty Wroblewski conducted research into the electrical properties at low temperatures, though his research ended early due to his accidental death. Around 1864, Karol Olszewski and Wroblewski predicted the electrical phenomena in ultra-cold temperatures of dropping resistance levels. Olszewski and Wroblewski documented evidence of this in the 1880s. For other persons named James Dewar, see James Dewar (disambiguation). ... Zygmunt Florenty Wróblewski Zygmunt Florenty Wróblewski (1845 - 1888) was a Polish chemist and physicist. ... 1864 (MDCCCLXIV) was a leap year starting on Friday (see link for calendar) of the Gregorian calendar or a leap year starting on Sunday of the 12-day-slower Julian calendar. ... Categories: Stub | 1846 births | 1915 deaths | Polish chemists | Polish mathematicians | Polish physicists ... // Development and commercial production of electric lighting Development and commercial production of gasoline-powered automobile by Karl Benz, Gottlieb Daimler and Maybach First commercial production and sales of phonographs and phonograph recordings. ...

Dewar and John Ambrose Fleming predicted that at absolute zero, pure metals would become perfect electromagnetic conductors (though, later, Dewar altered his opinion on the disappearance of resistance believing that there would always be some resistance). Walther Hermann Nernst developed the third law of thermodynamics and stated that absolute zero was unattainable. Carl von Linde and William Hampson, both commercial researchers, nearly at the same time filed for patents on the Joule-Thomson effect. Linde's patent was the climax of 20 years of systematic investigation of establish facts, using a regenerative counterflow method. Hampson's designs was also of a regenerative method. The combined process became known as the Linde-Hampson liquefaction process. Sir John Ambrose Fleming (November 29, 1849 - April 18, 1945) was an English electrical engineer and physicist. ... Absolute zero is the lowest possible temperature where nothing could be colder, and no heat energy remains in a substance. ... Walther Nernst. ... The third law of thermodynamics (hereinafter Third Law) states that as a system approaches the zero absolute temperature (hereinafter ZAT), all processes cease and the entropy of the system approaches a minimum value. ... Carl Paul Gottfried von Linde (born 11 June 1842 in Berndorf (Oberfranken); died 16 November 1934 in Munich) was a German engineer who developed the basics of modern refrigeration technology. ... In physics, the Joule-Thomson effect, or Joule-Kelvin effect, is a process in which the temperature of a real gas is either decreased or increased by letting the gas expand freely at constant enthalpy (which means that no heat is transferred to or from the gas, and no external...

Onnes purchased a Linde machine for his research. On March 21, 1900, Nikola Tesla was granted a US patent for the means for increasing the intensity of electrical oscillations by lowering temperature, which was caused by lowered resistance, a phenomenon previously observed by Olszewski and Wroblewski. Within this patent it describes the increase intensity and duration of electric oscillations of a low temperature resonating circuit. It is believed that Tesla had intended that Linde's machine would be used to attain the cooling agents. is the 80th day of the year (81st in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Ğ: For the film, see: 1900 (film). ... Nikola Tesla (1856-1943)[1] was a world-renowned Serbian inventor, physicist, mechanical engineer and electrical engineer. ... Oscillation is the variation, typically in time, of some measure as seen, for example, in a swinging pendulum. ... Cryogenics is a branch of physics (or engineering) that studies the production of very low temperatures (below –150 °C, –238 °F or 123 K) and the behavior of materials at those temperatures. ... A resonator is a device or part that vibrates (or oscillates) with waves. ...

Sudden and fundamental disappearance

Heike Kamerlingh Onnes and Jacob Clay reinvestigated Dewars's earlier experiments on the reduction of resistance at low temperatures. Onnes, with assistants at his facility, began the investigations with platinum and gold, replacing these later with mercury (a more readily refineable material). Onnes research of the resistivity of solid mercury at cryogenic temperatures was accomplished by using the Onnes own process of attaining liquid helium as a refrigerant. At the temperature of 4.19 K, he observed that the resistivity abruptly disappeared (the measuring device Onnes was using did not indicate any resistance). Onnes disclosed, in 1911, his research in a paper titled "On the Sudden Rate at Which the Resistance of Mercury Disappears". Onnes stated in that paper that the "specific resistance" becomes one thousand, thousands of times less in amount relative to the best conductor at ordinary temperature. Onnes later reversed the process and found that at 4.2 K, the resistance returned to the material. The next year, Onnes published more articles about the phenomenon. Initially, Onnes called the phenomenon "supraconductivity" (1913) and, only later, adopted the term "superconductivity". For his research, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1913. Heike Kamerlingh Onnes (September 21, 1853 – February 21, 1926) was a Dutch physicist. ... General Name, Symbol, Number platinum, Pt, 78 Chemical series transition metals Group, Period, Block 10, 6, d Appearance grayish white Standard atomic weight 195. ... GOLD refers to one of the following: GOLD (IEEE) is an IEEE program designed to garner more student members at the university level (Graduates of the Last Decade). ... General Name, Symbol, Number mercury, Hg, 80 Chemical series transition metals Group, Period, Block 12, 6, d Appearance silvery Standard atomic weight 200. ... For other uses, see Helium (disambiguation). ... Year 1911 (MCMXI) was a common year starting on Sunday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a common year starting on Saturday of the 13-day-slower Julian calendar). ... Hannes Alfvén (1908–1995) accepting the Nobel Prize for his work on magnetohydrodynamics [1]. List of Nobel Prize laureates in Physics from 1901 to the present day. ... Year 1913 (MCMXIII) was a common year starting on Wednesday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a common year starting on Tuesday of the 13-day-slower Julian calendar). ...

Onnes conducted an experiment, in 1912, on the usability of superconductivity. Onnes introduced electrical oscillations into a conductive ring and removed the battery that generated electrical oscillations. Upon measuring the electrical current, Onnes found that the intensity of electrical oscillations did not diminish. This was experimental proof of Tesla's US685012 patent. The current lifespan was increased due to the superconductive state of the conductive medium. In subsequent decades, superconductivity was found in several other materials. In 1913, lead was found to superconduct at 7 K, and in 1941 niobium nitride was found to superconduct at 16 K. 1912 (MCMXII) was a leap year starting on Monday in the Gregorian calendar (or a leap year starting on Tuesday in the 13-day-slower Julian calendar). ... Year 1913 (MCMXIII) was a common year starting on Wednesday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a common year starting on Tuesday of the 13-day-slower Julian calendar). ... For Pb as an abbreviation, see PB. General Name, Symbol, Number lead, Pb, 82 Chemical series Post-transition metals or poor metals Group, Period, Block 14, 6, p Appearance bluish gray Standard atomic weight 207. ... For other uses, see 1941 (disambiguation). ...

Enigmas and solutions

The next important step in understanding superconductivity occurred in 1933, when Meissner and Ochsenfeld discovered that superconductors expelled applied magnetic fields, a phenomenon which has come to be known as the Meissner effect. In 1935, F. and H. London showed that the Meissner effect was a consequence of the minimization of the electromagnetic free energy carried by superconducting current. In 1950, the phenomenological Ginzburg-Landau theory of superconductivity was devised by Landau and Ginzburg. Year 1933 (MCMXXXIII) was a common year starting on Sunday (link will display full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... Walter Meißner was born in Berlin in 1882, where he studied machine construction and physics, promoting with Max Planck. ... Robert Ochsenfeld was a German physicist born on 18 May 1901 in Helberhausen. ... Diagram of the Meissner effect. ... 1935 (MCMXXXV) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will display full calendar). ... The free energy is a measure of the amount of mechanical (or other) work that can be extracted from a system, and is helpful in engineering applications. ... Year 1950 (MCML) was a common year starting on Sunday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... In physics, Ginzburg-Landau theory is a mathematical theory used to model superconductivity. ... Lev Davidovich Landau (Ле́в Дави́дович Ланда́у) (January 22, 1908 – April 1, 1968) was a prominent Soviet physicist and winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics whose broad field of work included the theory of superconductivity and superfluidity, quantum electrodynamics, nuclear physics and particle physics. ... Vitaly Lazarevich Ginzburg (Виталий Лазаревич Гинзбург) (born October 4, 1916 in Moscow) is a Soviet/Russian theoretical physicist and astrophysicist, a member of the Academy of Sciences of the...

Ginzburg-Landau theory, which combined Landau's theory of second-order phase transitions with a Schrödinger-like wave equation, had great success in explaining the macroscopic properties of superconductors. In particular, Abrikosov showed that Ginzburg-Landau theory predicts the division of superconductors into the two categories now referred to as Type I and Type II. Abrikosov and Ginzburg were awarded the 2003 Nobel Prize for their work (Landau having died in 1968). Also in 1950, Maxwell and Reynolds et al. found that the critical temperature of a superconductor depends on the isotopic mass of the constituent element. This important discovery pointed to the electron-phonon interaction as the microscopic mechanism responsible for superconductivity. In physics, a phase transition, (or phase change) is the transformation of a thermodynamic system from one phase to another. ... For a non-technical introduction to the topic, please see Introduction to quantum mechanics. ... Alexei Alexeevich Abrikosov (Алексей Алексеевич Абрикосов) (born June 25, 1928, in Moscow, Russian SFSR, USSR.) is a Russian theoretical physicist whose main contributions are in the field... Year 2003 (MMIII) was a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1968 (MCMLXVIII) was a leap year starting on Monday (link will display full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1950 (MCML) was a common year starting on Sunday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... For other uses, see Isotope (disambiguation). ... The periodic table of the chemical elements A chemical element, or element, is a type of atom that is defined by its atomic number; that is, by the number of protons in its nucleus. ...

BCS Theory

The complete microscopic theory of superconductivity was finally proposed in 1957 by Bardeen, Cooper, and Schrieffer. This BCS theory explained the superconducting current as a superfluid of Cooper pairs, pairs of electrons interacting through the exchange of phonons. For this work, the authors were awarded the Nobel Prize in 1972. The BCS theory was set on a firmer footing in 1958, when Bogoliubov showed that the BCS wavefunction, which had originally been derived from a variational argument, could be obtained using a canonical transformation of the electronic Hamiltonian. In 1959, Lev Gor'kov showed that the BCS theory reduced to the Ginzburg-Landau theory close to the critical temperature. Gor'kov was the first to derive the superconducting phase evolution equation . Year 1957 (MCMLVII) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link displays the 1957 Gregorian calendar). ... John Bardeen (May 23, 1908 – January 30, 1991) was an American physicist and electrical engineer. ... Leon Neil Cooper (born February 28, 1930) is an American physicist and winner of the 1972 Nobel Prize for Physics, along with John Bardeen and John Robert Schrieffer, for his role in developing the BCS theory (named for their initials) of superconductivity. ... John Robert Schrieffer (born May 31, 1931) is an American physicist and winner, with John Bardeen and Leon Neil Cooper, of the 1972 Nobel Prize for Physics for developing the BCS theory (for their initials), the first successful microscopic theory of superconductivity. ... BCS theory (named for its creators, Bardeen, Cooper, and Schrieffer) successfully explains conventional superconductivity, the ability of certain metals at low temperatures to conduct electricity without resistance. ... A Cooper pair is the name given to electrons that are bound together in a certain manner first described by Leon Cooper. ... Year 1972 (MCMLXXII) was a leap year starting on Saturday (link will display full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1958 (MCMLVIII) was a common year starting on Wednesday (link will display full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... Nikolai Nikolaevich Bogoliubov (21 August 1909 – 13 February 1992) was a Russian-Ukrainian mathematician and theoretical physicist known for his work in statistical field theory and dynamical systems. ... The quantum Hamiltonian is the physical state of a system, which may be characterized as a ray in an abstract Hilbert space (or, in the case of ensembles, as a trace class operator with trace 1). ... Year 1959 (MCMLIX) was a common year starting on Thursday (link will display full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... Lev Gorkov is an American research physicist who is internationally known for his pioneering work in the field of superconductivity. ...

Little and Parks Effect

The Little-Parks effect was discovered in 1962 in experiments with empty and thin-walled superconducting cylinders subjected to a parallel magnetic field. The electrical resistance of such cylinders shows a periodic oscillation with the magnetic flux piercing the cylinder, the period being h/2e = 2.07e⁻¹⁵ Tm². The explanation provided by Little and Parks is that the resistance oscillation reflects a more fundamental phenomenon, i.e. periodic oscillation of the superconducting critical temperature (Tc). This is the temperature at which the sample becomes superconducting. The LP effect is a result of collective quantum behavior of superconducting electrons. It reflects the general fact that it is the fluxoid rather than the flux which is quantized in superconductors. The LP effect demonstrates that vector-potential couples to an observable physical quantity, namely the superconducting critical temperature. Year 1962 (MCMLXII) was a common year starting on Monday (the link is to a full 1962 calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... Superconductivity is a phenomenon occurring in certain materials at low temperatures, characterised by the complete absence of electrical resistance and the damping of the interior magnetic field (the Meissner effect. ... A right circular cylinder An elliptic cylinder In mathematics, a cylinder is a quadric surface, with the following equation in Cartesian coordinates: This equation is for an elliptic cylinder, a generalization of the ordinary, circular cylinder (a = b). ... Magnetic field lines shown by iron filings In physics, the space surrounding moving electric charges, changing electric fields and magnetic dipoles contains a magnetic field. ... Electrical resistance is a measure of the degree to which an electrical component opposes the passage of current. ... Periodicity is the quality of occurring at regular intervals (e. ... Oscillation is the variation, typically in time, of some measure as seen, for example, in a swinging pendulum. ...

Commercial activity

In 1962, the first commercial superconducting wire, a niobium-titanium alloy, was developed by researchers at Westinghouse. In the same year, Josephson made the important theoretical prediction that a supercurrent can flow between two pieces of superconductor separated by a thin layer of insulator. This phenomenon, now called the Josephson effect, is exploited by superconducting devices such as SQUIDs. It is used in the most accurate available measurements of the magnetic flux quantum h/e, and thus (coupled with the quantum Hall resistivity) for Planck's constant h. Josephson was awarded the Nobel Prize for this work in 1973. Year 1962 (MCMLXII) was a common year starting on Monday (the link is to a full 1962 calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... Westinghouse logo (designed by Paul Rand) The Westinghouse Electric Company, headquartered in Monroeville, Pennsylvania, is an organization founded by George Westinghouse in 1886. ... Brian David Josephson (born Cardiff, Wales, UK, January 4, 1940) is a British physicist whose discovery of the Josephson effect as a 22-year-old graduate student won him the 1973 Nobel Prize for Physics, which he shared with Leo Esaki and Ivar Giaever. ... The Josephson effect is the phenomenon of current flow across two weakly coupled superconductors, separated by a very thin insulating barrier. ... For other uses, see Squid (disambiguation). ... The magnetic flux quantum Φ0 is the quantum of magnetic flux passing through a superconductor. ... The quantum Hall effect is a quantum-mechanical version of the Hall effect, observed in two-dimensional electron systems subjected to low temperatures and strong magnetic fields, in which the Hall conductance takes on the quantized values where is the elementary charge and is Plancks constant. ... A commemoration plaque for Max Planck on his discovery of Plancks constant, in front of Humboldt University, Berlin. ... For the song by James Blunt, see 1973 (song). ...

In 1986, Bednorz and Mueller discovered superconductivity in a lanthanum-based cuprate perovskite material, which had a transition temperature of 35 K (Nobel Prize in Physics, 1987). It was shortly found that replacing the lanthanum with yttrium, i.e. making YBCO, raised the critical temperature to 92 K, which was important because liquid nitrogen could then be used as a refrigerant (at atmospheric pressure, the boiling point of nitrogen is 77 K.) This is important commercially because liquid nitrogen can be produced cheaply on-site with no raw materials, and is not prone to some of the problems (solid air plugs, etc) of helium in piping. Many other cuprate superconductors have since been discovered, and the theory of superconductivity in these materials is one of the major outstanding challenges of theoretical condensed matter physics. Year 1986 (MCMLXXXVI) was a common year starting on Wednesday (link displays 1986 Gregorian calendar). ... Johannes Georg Bednorz (born May 16, 1950) is a German physicist who, along with Karl Alex Muller, was awarded the 1987 Nobel Prize for Physics for their joint discovery of superconductivity in certain substances at temperatures higher than had previously been thought attainable. ... Karl Alexander Müller (born April 20, 1927) is a Swiss physicist who, along with J. Georg Bednorz, was awarded the 1987 Nobel Prize for Physics for their joint discovery of superconductivity in certain substances at higher temperatures than had previously been thought attainable. ... General Name, Symbol, Number lanthanum, La, 57 Chemical series lanthanides Group, Period, Block 3, 6, f Appearance silvery white Atomic mass 138. ... Year 1987 (MCMLXXXVII) was a common year starting on Thursday (link displays 1987 Gregorian calendar). ... General Name, Symbol, Number yttrium, Y, 39 Chemical series transition metals Group, Period, Block 3, 5, d Appearance silvery white Atomic mass 88. ... Yttrium barium copper oxide, or YBCO, chemical formula YBa2Cu3O7-δ, is a high-temperature superconductor with a superconducting temperature of 94K. Its discovery by C.W. Chu in 1987 launched the era of high-temperature superconductors. ... General Name, Symbol, Number nitrogen, N, 7 Chemical series nonmetals Group, Period, Block 15, 2, p Appearance colorless gas Standard atomic weight 14. ... Condensed matter physics is the field of physics that deals with the macroscopic physical properties of matter. ...

As of March 2007, the current world record of superconductivity is held by a ceramic superconductor doped with Thallium, Mercury, Copper, Barium, Calcium, Strontium and Oxygen (T_c=138 K). Also a patent has been applied for a material which becomes superconductive at an even higher temperature (up to 150 K).[1]

Historical publications

Onnes papers

• "The resistance of pure mercury at helium temperatures" Comm. Leiden. April 28, 1911.
• "The disappearance of the resistivity of mercury". Comm. Leiden. May 27, 1911.
• "On the sudden change in the rate at which the resistance of mercury disappears". Comm. Leiden. November 25, 1911.
• "The imitation of an ampere molecular current or a permanent magnet by means of a supraconductor". Comm. Leiden.

BCS theory

• J. Bardeen, L.N. Cooper, and J.R. Schrieffer, Phys. Rev. 108, 1175 (1957)

Other papers

• W. Meissner and R. Oschenfeld, Naturwiss. 21, 787 (1933)
• F. London and H. London, Proc. R. Soc. London A149, 71 (1935)
• V.L. Ginzburg and L.D. Landau, Zh. Eksp. Teor. Fiz. 20, 1064 (1950)
• E.Maxwell, Phys. Rev. 78, 477 (1950)
• C.A. Reynolds et al., Phys. Rev. 78, 487 (1950)
• W. A. Little and R. D. Parks, Physical Review Letters, Vol.9, page 9, (1962).
• M. Tinkham, “Introduction to Superconductivity”, 2nd Ed., McGraw-Hill, NY, 1996.

Patents

• Tesla, Nikola, U.S. Patent 685,012  "Means for Increasing the Intensity of Electrical Oscillations", March 21, 1900.

See also

• Timeline of low-temperature technology

Timeline of low-temperature technology c. ...

External links and references

• Onnes, Heike Kamerlingh, "Investigations into the properties of substances at low temperatures, which have led, amongst other things, to the preparation of liquid helium". Nobel Lecture, December 11, 1913.
• Shachtman, Tom, "Absolute Zero: And the Conquest of Cold". Houghton Mifflin Company, December 1999. ISBN 0-395-93888-0
• YUG SP