This is a rather entertaining article (a chapter from a book) written by Jan Zaanen on the history of the theory of high-Tc superconductivity. As everyone knows (or should know), the exact theory for this family of material is still a highly debated and contentious holy grail in condensed matter physics. It is also an area that will have wide-ranging ramifications in not only condensed matter physics, but also in many areas of physics. So knowing the development of the history of the search for this theory might be interesting and important.
Zz.
3 comments:
In his account, Zannen mentioned that he had been immediately convinced of the truth of Varma's currents. However, such currents seem incompatible with the formation of Zhang-Rice singlets. The former breaks time reversal symmetry while the latter does not. How do you think ?
I must admit that this is something that I haven't thought about much. Maybe I'd rather leave it to the theorists to work these things out.
Anyone else have any idea on this?
Zz.
As far as I'm concerned, the experiments by Bourges and Kapitulnik, using polarized neutrons and light respectively, only point at a time reversal symmetry breaking phase, which cannot be a priori nailed down as the Varma's current phase. Actually, the so-called checkerboard phase, which was found by Kohsaka et al. in the pseudogap regime, also claims time reversal symmetry breaking.
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