Tuesday, September 27, 2011

A quantum chemist tries to solve cuprate superconductivity

Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters has a paper Origin of the Pseudogap in High-Temperature Cuprate Superconductors  by Jamil Tahir-Kheli and William A. Goddard, III

I can't say I really follow the details here. The doping dependence of the pseudogap they calculate seems to be a percolation effect. A key issue is whether they can produce the anisotropy in the pseudogap in momentum space. It is not clear they do since everything seems to be done in real space.

There is some interesting history here, going back to the early days of high-Tc.
Sparks fly over conflicting theories from Chemical and Engineering News in 1988, discusses conflict between Phil Anderson and Goddard.
A clash erupts between scientific subculture is a New York Times article from 1989 which quotes a Dr. Anderson who is presumably Phil Anderson.

I thank Seth Olsen for bringing some of these articles to my attention.

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