Fall 2013 Physics Colloquium
October 25; PAS 224, 3pm
Sumit Mazumdar
University of Arizona
Two decades of fulleride (C60) superconductivity: Are we seeing the light?
Since the discovery of superconductivity in A3C60 (A=K, Rb) in 1991 it has
been debated whether the superconductivity is being driven by
electron-phonon interactions, as in the standard BCS theory, or whether it
is driven by electron-electron interactions, within a theory that is yet
to be discovered. A second question that has also perplexed scientists,
theorists and experimentalists alike, is: why is superconductivity limited
to molecular valence of 3? Why is the 3 the magic number?
I will give a single answer to both questions within a theory that we have
developed over the past year. It gives an entirely new perspective to
correlated-electron theory of superconductivity.