Physicists have proven the existence of spontaneous electric currents in superconductors

Superconductivity is current without electrical resistance. Today, theoretical physicists and experimentalists

are working to discover and explain the underlying fundamental mechanisms of superconductivity. Research into this material properties is especially important for the fields of energy and motor technology.

Of particular interest is the material ruthenatestrontium with the chemical formula Sr₂RuO₄. In this compound, superconductivity is accompanied by spontaneous ring currents. Unlike currents in metal wires or supercurrents in conventional superconductors, they arise as a property of the ground state. This is comparable to the movement of electrons in atomic orbitals, but in a superconductor such a process is caused by the collective movement of many electrons. Since this special type of superconductivity with spontaneous currents is also relevant for quantum computing, strontium ruthenate is important for future applications of superconductivity.

In an article published in the magazineNature physics, subatomic particles - muons - were used inas probes for the experimental detection of these subtle electrical currents in superconducting strontium ruthenate using the resulting magnetic fields. When strontium ruthenate is subjected to uniaxial pressure, spontaneous currents begin to appear at a temperature lower than superconductivity. In other words, the transition splits into two regions: first superconductivity, then spontaneous currents. This symmetry-breaking pressure splitting has not previously been demonstrated in any other material. In the future, scientists will have to revise previous theoretical models of superconductivity.

Study authors from the Solid State Institute andmaterials to them. Leibniz, Dresden, note that this work became possible only thanks to the technical development of a unique uniaxial stretching device for experiments on muon spin rotation.

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An atomic orbital is a one-electron wave function obtained by solving the Schrödinger equation for a given atom; is given by: principal n, orbital l, and magnetic m - quantum numbers.