{"id":223372,"date":"2023-01-21T20:17:13","date_gmt":"2023-01-21T14:47:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.forumias.com\/?p=223372"},"modified":"2023-02-25T12:20:28","modified_gmt":"2023-02-25T06:50:28","slug":"a-century-later-a-clearer-picture-of-how-mercury-becomes-a-superconductor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/a-century-later-a-clearer-picture-of-how-mercury-becomes-a-superconductor\/","title":{"rendered":"A century later, a clearer picture of how mercury becomes a superconductor"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Source: <\/b>The post is based on the articl<\/span>e \u201cA century later, a clearer picture of how mercury becomes a superconductor\u201d <\/b>published in<\/span> The Hindu <\/b>on 20th January 2023.<\/b><\/p>\n

What is the News?<\/b><\/h2>\n

More than 100 years ago, the physicist Heike Kamerlingh Onnes discovered that solid mercury acts as a superconductor. Now, for the first time, physicists have a complete microscopic understanding of why this is so.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

What is Superconductivity?<\/b><\/h2>\n

Superconductivity is the ability of a material to conduct electricity without any resistance.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It is observed in many materials when they are cooled below a critical temperature <\/span>that marks the transition to the superconducting state.<\/span><\/p>\n

About the superconductivity in Mercury<\/b><\/h2>\n

In 1911, Heike Kamerlingh Onnes discovered superconductivity in mercury. Onnes had invented a way to cool materials to absolute zero \u2013 the lowest temperature possible.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Using his technique, he found that at a very low temperature, called the threshold temperature, solid mercury offers no resistance to the flow of electric current. It was a watershed moment in the history of physics.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Methodologies to determine superconductivity in mercury: <\/b>Superconductivity in Mercury can be explained by the following theories:<\/span><\/p>\n

BCS (Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer) Theory: <\/b>In BCS superconductors, vibrational energy released by the grid of atoms encourages electrons to pair up, forming so-called Cooper pairs.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2013 These copper pairs can move like water in a stream, facing no resistance to their flow, below a threshold temperature. This could explain why mercury has such a low threshold temperature (around \u2013270\u00b0C).<\/span><\/p>\n

Spin-Orbit Coupling(SOC) Theory: <\/b>SOC is the way an electron\u2019s energy is affected by the relationship between its spin and its momentum.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2013 SOC gave a better view of the phonons\u2019 energies and explained why mercury has such a low threshold temperature (approx. \u2013270\u00ba C).<\/span><\/p>\n

Coulomb repulsion (a.k.a. \u2018like charges repel\u2019) between two electrons in each pair: <\/b>The superconducting state is determined by a balance between an attractive interaction between electrons, mediated by phonons and the repulsive Coulomb interaction (electrostatic repulsion between negative charges).<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2013 The electrons are able to overcome their repulsion and pair up because the phonons have a very low frequency and the electrons have a relatively higher frequency, allowing the interacting electrons to avoid each other in time.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2013 The researchers found that, in mercury, one electron in each pair occupied a higher energy level than the other, a detail that reduced the Coulomb repulsion and nurtured superconductivity.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Source: The post is based on the article \u201cA century later, a clearer picture of how mercury becomes a superconductor\u201d published in The Hindu on 20th January 2023. What is the News? More than 100 years ago, the physicist Heike Kamerlingh Onnes discovered that solid mercury acts as a superconductor. Now, for the first time,… Continue reading A century later, a clearer picture of how mercury becomes a superconductor<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10317,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1566,1738,9],"tags":[10498],"class_list":["post-223372","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daily-factly-articles","category-science-and-technology-daily-factly-articles","category-public","tag-the-hindu","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","views":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223372","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10317"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=223372"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223372\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=223372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=223372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=223372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}