Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2014-06-mystery-high-temp-superconductors.html#jCp
A Binghamton University physicist and his colleagues say they have unlocked one key mystery surrounding high-temperature superconductivity. Their research, published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found a remarkable phenomenon in copper-oxide (cuprate) high-temperature superconductors.
Michael Lawler, assistant professor of physics at Binghamton, is part of an international team of physicists with an ongoing interest in the mysterious pseudogap phase, the phase situated between insulating and superconducting phases in the cuprate phase diagram.
"Evidence has been accumulating that this phase supports an exotic density wave state that may be key to its existence," the physicists write in the new journal article. A density wave forms in a metal if the fluid electrons themselves crystalize.