How Superconductivity Is Born express
In some materials, electric current can flow without any loss: this is superconductivity. But before becoming a superconductor, a substance often passes through a strange state: electrons already sense each other and form pairs, yet they cannot move in unison. This phase is called the pseudogap, as if the material is frozen in hesitation before a leap.
An international team of physicists, building on recent work by Richard Feynman on quantum interactions, has derived two clear conditions under which the pseudogap gives way to the superconducting dome. First: the pseudogap temperature must drop as more charge carriers are added to the material. As if the hesitation dissipates with more participants in the rehearsal. Second: the order parameter must simultaneously grow, meaning the system becomes increasingly organized. These two conditions are met thanks to a new pairing mechanism — entanglement and confinement of holes (ECHP). In it, the quantum connection between particles is so strong that they cannot drift apart.
This mechanism does not just explain how superconductivity appears in cuprates. It describes the entire phase diagram — both for materials with excess electrons and for those with a deficit. It turns out that superconductivity is not a random guest but a natural outcome: the fading of the pseudogap coincides with the growth of order.
Original abstract
as written by the authors arXiv:2606.11056
We generalize the condition under which a quantum material exhibiting a pseudogap phase is a precursor to a superconducting (SC) dome. The result reveals the non-analytic T* as a function of doping. A well-known example is the high-Tc cuprates. Essentially, the SC dome is generated under two conditions: (1) that the pseudogap T* is a decreasing function of doping, due to the decrease in size of extended pairing of doped holes with doping, and most importantly, (2) that the rate of configurational-ordering parameter is an increasing function of doping as a result of the decrease in extended length of the disordered pairs. These two conditions are provided by the new entanglement and confinement pairing mechanism of high-Tc cuprates. This is a theory that has recently been discussed in the literature by Buot et al. It hinges on a novel strong entanglement and confinement hole pairing (ECHP) mechanism that unravels the microscopic features of the entire phase diagram of both electron and hole-doped high-Tc cuprates.
The pseudogap was discovered by accident: scientists were trying to understand why superconductivity in cuprates disappears at a certain temperature, and they stumbled upon a state where pairs already exist but supercurrent does not yet.