For their experiment, Professor Michael Köhl from the Physics Institute at the University of Bonn and co-authors used a superconducting gas made of ultracold lithium atoms.
“At a certain temperature, the state of the gas changes abruptly: it becomes a superconductor that conducts a current without any resistance,” they explained.
“The lithium gas changes to a more orderly state at its phase transition. This includes the formation of so-called Cooper pairs, which are combinations of two atoms that behave like a single particle to the outside.”
“Cooper pairs behave fundamentally differently from individual atoms: they move together and can do so without scattering on other atoms or pairs. This is the reason for the superconductivity. But what happens when you try to excite the pairs?”
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