Menlo Park, Calif. -- A team led by scientists at the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory combined powerful magnetic pulses with some of the brightest X-rays on the planet to discover a surprising 3-D arrangement of a material's electrons that appears closely linked to a mysterious phenomenon known as high-temperature superconductivity.

This unexpected twist marks an important milestone in the 30-year journey to better understand how materials known as high-temperature superconductors conduct electricity with no resistance at temperatures hundreds of degrees Fahrenheit above those of conventional metal superconductors but still hundreds of degrees below freezing. The study was published today in Science.

The study also resolves an apparent mismatch in data from previous experiments and charts a new course for fully mapping the behaviors of electrons in these exotic materials under different conditions. Researchers have an ultimate goal to aid the design and development of new superconductors that work at warmer temperatures.

'Totally Unexpected' Physics 

"This was totally unexpected, and also very exciting. This experiment has identified a new ingredient to consider in this field of study. Nobody had seen this 3-D picture before," said Jun-Sik Lee, a SLAC staff scientist and one of the leaders of the experiment conducted at SLAC's Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) X-ray laser. "This is an important step in understanding the physics of high-temperature superconductors."

The dream is to push the operating temperature for superconductors to room temperature, he added, which could lead to advances in computing, electronics and power grid technologies.

There are already many uses for standard superconducting technology, from MRI machines that diagnose brain tumors to a prototype levitating train, the CERN particle collider that enabled the Nobel Prize-winning discovery of the Higgs boson and ultrasensitive detectors used to hunt for dark matter, the invisible constituent believed to make up most of the mass of the universe. A planned upgrade to the LCLS, known as LCLS-II, will include a superconducting particle accelerator.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-11/dnal-rda110215.php