Is room-temperature superconductivity with phonons possible?

By recognizing the vital importance of two-hole Cooper pairs (CPs) in addition to the usual two-electron ones in a strongly-interacting many-electron system, the concept of CPs was re-examined with striking conclusions. Based on this, Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) theory has been generalized to include not boson-boson interactions (also neglected in BCS theory) but rather boson-fermion (BF)interaction vertices reminiscent of the Frohlich electron-phonon interaction in metals. Unlike BCS theory, the GBEC model is not a mean-field theory restricted to weak-coupling as it can be diagonalized exactly. In weak coupling it reproduces the BCS condensation energy. Each kind of CP is responsible for only half the condensation energy. The GBEC theory reduces to all the old known statistical theories as special cases including the so-called "BCS-Bose crossover" picture which in turn generalizes BCS theory by not assuming that the electron chemical potential equals the Fermi energy. Indeed, a BCS condensate is precisely the weak-coupling limit of a GBE condensate with equal numbers of both types of CPs. With feasible Cooper/BCS model interelectonic interaction parameter values, and even without BF interactions, the GBEC theory yields transition temperatures [including room-temperature superconductivity (RTSC)] substantially higher than the BCS ceiling of around 45K, without relying on non-phonon dynamics involving excitons, plasmons, magnons or otherwise purely-electronic mechanisms.Comment: 14 pages, 2 figures, Mini-course delivered at "X Training Course in the Physics of Correlated-Electron Systems and High Tc Superconductors" Salerno, Italy, 3-14 October, 200

Anomalous behavior of ideal Fermi gas below two dimensions

Normal behavior of the thermodynamic properties of a Fermi gas in $d>2$ dimensions, integer or not, means monotonically increasing or decreasing of its specific heat, chemical potential or isothermal sound velocity, all as functions of temperature. However, for $0<d<2$ dimensions these properties develop a ``hump'' (or ``trough'') which increases (or deepens) as $d\to 0$. Though not the phase transition signaled by the sharp features (``cusp'' or ``jump'') in those properties for the ideal Bose gas in $d>2$ (known as the Bose-Einstein condensation), it is nevertheless an intriguing structural anomaly which we exhibit in detail.Comment: 14 pages including 3 figure

Bose-Einstein condensation in quasi-2D systems: applications to high Tc superconductivity

We describe high-Tc superconductivity in layered materials within a BCS theory as a BEC of massless-like Cooper pairons satisfying a linear dispersion relation, and propagating within quasi-2D layers of finite width defined by the charge distribution about the CuO_2 planes. We obtain a closed formula for the critical temperature, Tc, that depends on the layer width, the binding energy of Cooper's pairs, and the average in-plane penetration depth. This formula reasonably reproduces empirical values of superconducting transition temperatures for several different cuprate materials near the optimal doping regime, as well as for YBCO films with different doping degrees.Comment: 5 pages, 1 figur

Cooper pairs as bosons

Although BCS pairs of fermions are known not to obey Bose-Einstein (BE) commutation relations nor BE statistics, we show how Cooper pairs (CPs), whether the simple original ones or the CPs recently generalized in a many-body Bethe-Salpeter approach, being clearly distinct from BCS pairs at least obey BE statistics. Hence, contrary to widespread popular belief, CPs can undergo BE condensation to account for superconductivity if charged, as well as for neutral-atom fermion superfluidity where CPs, but uncharged, are also expected to form.Comment: 8 pages, 2 figures, full biblio info adde

Origin of nonlinear contribution to the shift of the critical temperature in atomic Bose-Einstein condensates

We discuss a possible origin of the experimentally observed nonlinear contribution to the shift $\Delta T_{c}=T_c-T_{c}^{0}$ of the critical temperature $T_{c}$ in an atomic Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) with respect to the critical temperature $T_{c}^{0}$ of an ideal gas. We found that accounting for a nonlinear (quadratic) Zeeman effect (with applied magnetic field closely matching a Feshbach resonance field $B_0$) in the mean-field approximation results in a rather significant renormalization of the field-free nonlinear contribution $b_{2}$, namely $\Delta T_{c}/T_{c}^{0}\simeq b_{2}^{\ast }(a/\lambda _{T})^{2}$ (where $a$ is the s-wave scattering length, $\lambda _{T}$ is the thermal wavelength at $T_{c}^{0}$) with $b_{2}^{\ast }=\gamma ^{2}b_{2}$ and $\gamma =\gamma (B_0)$. In particular, we predict $b_{2}^{\ast }\simeq 42.3$ for the $B_{0}\simeq 403G$ resonance observed in the $\ ^{39}K$ BEC.Comment: Accepted for publication in JETP Letter