Changing direction: Research team discovers switchable electronic chirality in an achiral Kagome superconductor

14-Oct-2022 - An international research team led by the Department of Microstructured Quantum Matter at the MPSD reports the first observation of switchable chiral transport in a structurally achiral crystal, the Kagome superconductor CsV₃Sb₅. Its work has been published in Nature. Whether or not an object is ...

Terahertz light from superconducting stripes

Scientists discover anomalous emission of terahertz radiation from copper oxides in which superconductivity coexists with charge-stripe order

27-Sep-2022 - Why do some materials carry electrical currents without any resistance only when cooled to near absolute zero while others do so at comparatively high temperatures? This key question continues to vex scientists studying the phenomenon of superconductivity. Now a team of researchers from Andrea ...

Magnetic field turns handed superconductor into liquid crystal-like nematic state

16-Sep-2021 - Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter (MPSD) in Hamburg and RWTH Aachen University have suggested a surprising connection between the nematic behavior of a superconductor in a magnetic field — a state that resembles liquid crystals used in LCDs — and its ...

Long live superconductivity!

Pathbreaking advance: Short flashes of light with sustaining impact

09-Feb-2021 - Superconductivity – the ability of a material to transmit an electric current without loss – is a quantum effect that, despite years of research, is still limited to very low temperatures. Now a team of scientists at the Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter (MPSD) in ...

Shaking off the correlated-electron traffic jam

17-Mar-2020 - An international team of researchers from Switzerland, Germany, the USA and Great Britain has uncovered an anomalous metallic behavior in an otherwise insulating ceramic material. The team used ultrashort light pulses with a wide range of colors to watch what happens when the insulating quasi ...

The force of the vacuum

Scientists’ theory of polaritonically amplified electron lattice interaction reveals new material design possibilities

07-Dec-2018 - Scientists from the Theory Department of the Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter (MPSD) at the Center for Free-Electron Laser Science (CFEL) in Hamburg have shown through theoretical calculations and computer simulations that the force between electrons and lattice ...

Light-induced superconductivity under high pressure

14-May-2018 - A team of scientists of the Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter (MPSD) at the Center for Free-Electron Laser Science in Hamburg investigated optically-induced superconductivity in the alkali-doped fulleride K3C60under high external pressures. This study allowed, on one ...

Superconductors earn their stripes

06-Feb-2018 - New Terahertz techniques help to detect striped superconductivity above the superconducting transition temperature in cuprates. Understanding high temperature superconductivity (high Tc) has been a long-standing challenge since its discovery in copper oxide compounds in 1986. A key issue in ...

Scientists shine new light on the “other high temperature superconductor”

15-Aug-2017 - A study led by scientists of the Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter (MPSD) at the Center for Free-Electron Laser Science in Hamburg presents evidence of the coexistence of superconductivity and “charge-density-waves” in compounds of the poorly-studied family of ...

Laser pulses help scientists tease apart complex electron interactions

21-Dec-2016 - Time-resolved “stop-action” measurements and advanced theoretical simulations identify an unusual form of energy loss Understanding the properties of complex quantum materials is a major goal of condensed matter physics and materials science, since effects like high-temperature superconductivity ...