Rudolf Gross and Frank Deppe, Walther-Meißner-Institute for Low Temperature Research, and Physik-Department, Technische Universität München, Garching
Abstract:
Superconductivity is one of the most fascinating but at the same time complicated phenomena in solid state physics. A large number of Nobel Prizes has been devoted to discoveries related to superconductivity and superconducting materials. After the discovery of the two fundamental properties of superconductors - perfect conductivity (1911) and perfect diamagnetism (1933) - it took until 1957 to develop the first microscopic theory of simple metallic superconductors. Later on, physicists and material scientists discovered several new classes of superconducting materials such as the heavy fermion superconductors, the cuprate (high-Tc) superconductors or the iron-pnictide superconductors, which are lacking a thorough theoretical understanding until today. We will present the foundations of superconductivity and address open issues in modern superconductivity research.
Although we do not understand all details of the phenomenon superconductivity, superconducting materials have a wide variety of interesting applications. However, these applications of superconductivity are usually not well known, since superconducting technology is a 'hidden technology' due to the requirement of low temperatures. We will focus on applications in electronics and sensing. Here, superconductors are used for the realization of the most sensitive detectors for magnetic flux, quantum limited sensors for microwave radiation, particle detectors with unprecedented sensitivity, or ultrafast digital electronics. Within the last decade, superconducting materials have been used for realizing the hardware of future quantum computers. The progress in this field has been so rapid and promising that companies like Google, IBM or D-Wave have started big programs aiming at the realization of superconducting quantum computation.
