The basics
Cooper pair
Two electrons bound together so they move through the material as one unit. Superconductivity is current carried by these pairs, which travel without scattering their energy away as heat.
Why cooper pair matters
The pairing is the thing a theory of superconductivity has to explain, and it is where the copper oxides still resist explanation.
Cooper pair in a real conductor
- NbElemental niobium, which has the highest transition temperature of any element at ambient pressure, and the material most superconducting circuits are wired in.
- AlAluminum superconducts at close to the lowest useful temperature on this list, and nearly every superconducting qubit in the world is built from it anyway.
Related to cooper pair
SuperMatics is a platform infrastructure company for superconducting devices: software that finds the material and the process, lab work that makes and measures it, and pilot manufacturing with industrial partners.If you have a device and a constraint it has to meet, tell us about it.