Discovery of Superconductor

Dutch physicist Heike Kamerlingh Onnes who was a pioneer in liquefying gasses first discovered superconductivity
in 1911. At the time he was the first person to create and work with liquid helium, which requires a temperature 4
K. He wanted to see how metals (mercury in this case) behave when exposed to such extremes. Much to his
surprise, at 4.2 K the resistance suddenly vanished. Thus, he became the father of superconductivity.

Two by Two: Cooper Pairs

When current flows in an ordinary conductor, the electrons keep on bumping into atoms (or other free electrons)
in their attempt to move to the battery’s positive charge. The energy they give off in the process is not electricity,
but heat. This is called resistance. This causes about a 7 percent loss of potential current.

In superconductors, there is no resistance to hinder the flow of electrons and hence, electricity can be conducted
with no or very little loss. The key to achieving superconductivity is keeping vibrating atoms out of the way of the
flow of electrons. The hotter those atoms get, the more fidgety they get. So, we need to cool these atoms to
reduce their resistance and if we cool them to a temperature low enough, the resistance will disappear
completely.

In 1957, three American physicists, John Bardeen, Leon Cooper, and Robert Schrieffer, developed a pretty
convincing hypothesis that electrons in a superconductive state were actually attracting each, the BCS (Bardeen-
Cooper-Schrieffer) theory.

According to BCS theory; the electrons pair up, zipping through the lattice with greater efficiency, forming a very
fluid stream. Scientists call these electrons Cooper pairs.

Generally speaking, this is what it looks like: When an electron enters the lattice and passes between two
positively-charged atoms, those cations get tugged just slightly toward the electron, and each other. The distortion
of lattice causes the local area to gain a small positive charge, which in turn, draws a second electron. It then
becomes pairs with the first electron and continues traveling that way. The electrons are not attracted to each
other: This attraction acts as the bond. This bond is pretty stable, and certainly more efficient than single electrons
zigzagging their way one by one through the crowd of cations.

There is another important aspect of this theory: These pairs don’t cooperate only with each other, but also with
other Cooper pairs. Simply speaking, the pairs can overlap, or even include other pairs within a longer pairing.

As long as the superconductor is cooled to very low temperatures, the Cooper pairs stay intact, due to reduced
molecular motion. As the superconductor gains heat energy, the vibrations in the lattice become more violent and
break the pairs

The BCS theory also explains that the

Cooper pairs are correlated. Therefore,
in order to break a pair, one has to
change energies of all other pairs. This
means there is an “energy gap” for
“single-particle excitation”, unlike in the
normal metal. Due to the energy gap,
the specific heat of the superconductor
is suppressed strongly at low
temperatures.