Superconductivity is a topic of enduring fundamental as well as practical interest which has recently attracted even more attention with the advent of superconducting quantum computers. The theory of so-called \u201cunconventional superconductors\u201d remains an extremely challenging area. Quantitative predictions are rare and it is difficult to find \u201csmoking guns\u201d that can provide experimental confirmation of a specific unconventional state.<\/p>\n
In a recent paper<\/a> involving theorists in Kent, Barcelona, Bristol, and Budapest we present a quantitative theory of an unconventional superconductor. The material under investigation is LaNiGa2<\/sub>, which has attracted much interest in recent years. Our theory has a single adjustable parameter which we fix from experiments. We demonstrate that it accurately predicts the unusual temperature-dependence of the specific heat of this system and use it to predict a unique experimental signature (in the spin-resolved density of states) of the underlying exotic pairing state.<\/p>\n It is interesting to note that the materials superconducting quantum computers are based on, namely \u201cconventional\u201d superconductors, have been well understood for over half a century. The lack of a detailed, microscopic understanding of unconventional superconductors severely limits our ability to exploit their unusual properties. Our recent work represents a step in that direction and could potentially provide a template for future predictive theories of other exotic superconducting materials. Experimental verification of our predictions would confirm this by making LaNiGa2<\/sub> the best-understood unconventional superconductor.<\/p>\n Reference:<\/strong><\/p>\n Sudeep Kumar Ghosh, G\u00e1bor Csire, Philip Whittlesea, James F. Annett, Martin Gradhand, Bal\u00e1zs \u00dajfalussy, Jorge Quintanilla, “Quantitative Theory of Triplet Pairing in the Unconventional Superconductor LaNiGa2”. Phys. Rev. B<\/em> 101<\/strong>, 100506(R) (2020). Preprint: https:\/\/arxiv.org\/abs\/1912.08160<\/a>.<\/p>\n This blog post was edited on 14\/4\/2020. Changes made: added fFull bibliographic reference.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Superconductivity is a topic of enduring fundamental as well as practical interest which has recently attracted even more attention with the advent of superconducting quantum computers. The theory of so-called \u201cunconventional superconductors\u201d remains an extremely challenging area. Quantitative predictions are rare and it is difficult to find \u201csmoking guns\u201d that can provide experimental confirmation of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":134,"featured_media":2066,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[777,780,584,774,771,675,783,553,672],"class_list":["post-2064","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-publications","tag-ab-initio","tag-bcs","tag-condensed-matter-physics","tag-dft","tag-dos","tag-nonunitary","tag-quantum-computers","tag-superconductors","tag-triplet-pairing"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/research.kent.ac.uk\/pqm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2064","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/research.kent.ac.uk\/pqm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/research.kent.ac.uk\/pqm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/research.kent.ac.uk\/pqm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/134"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/research.kent.ac.uk\/pqm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2064"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/research.kent.ac.uk\/pqm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2064\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2195,"href":"https:\/\/research.kent.ac.uk\/pqm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2064\/revisions\/2195"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/research.kent.ac.uk\/pqm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2066"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/research.kent.ac.uk\/pqm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2064"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/research.kent.ac.uk\/pqm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2064"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/research.kent.ac.uk\/pqm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2064"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}