The era of superconductivity, the era of superconductivity丨 exhibition volume

In one "small era" after another, superconductivity research has flourished, especially Chinese scientists have made remarkable achievements. To keep up with the tide of the times, understand the relevant knowledge of superconductivity, go back to the historical origin of the "small era", and read a popular science book with pictures and texts and a relaxed narrative at the right time - "Superconductivity "Small Era": The Past, Present life and future of superconductivity. If you are a melon eater, you can read scientific gossip; if you are a professional scholar, you can taste the frontiers of science; each has its own gains, and find the big stage in the "small era".

Written by 丨 Ji Yang

Superconductivity, or superconductivity, refers to the very special properties of some materials at low temperatures: they transmit current without any resistance, neither heat nor waste energy. Discovered more than a hundred years ago, the phenomenon of superconductivity contains rich physical content and has a wide range of application scenarios, attracting the attention of many scientists and engineers. In recent years, many related applications have gradually entered the public eye, and more and more people have begun to care about superconductivity.

"Superconductivity Small Times" is a popular science book about superconductivity, and the author is Luo Huiqian, a teacher at the Institute of Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. As the subtitle "Superconductivity's Past, Present, and Future" shows, this book provides a comprehensive introduction to the history and current situation of superconductivity, and makes some prospects for the future.

I am an old friend of Hui Qian, because we are not only big colleagues in physics research, but also enthusiasts who are interested in popular science and have done some related work. In the past few days, I have read this book again and gained more. Superconducting Times is a new book that has just been published, so why say "read it again"? Because I read most of it in Physics magazine five or six years ago, in his blog. At that time, he would write a popular science article on superconductivity almost every month, introducing the basic knowledge, development process and frontier progress of superconductivity in an easy-to-understand way. At that time, he should have planned to collect and publish in the future, and now the content of the book is basically in accordance with the order of the original article, and maintains the previous characteristics (for example, the whole book does not have a formula, very popular science books, but there are many references, which is the style of scientific papers), and some content has been added (which are added specifically, I have not examined, but it is certain that the pictures have increased a lot, and some are still redrawn).

Professor Luo Huiqian is an expert in superconducting physics and has been studying and working in related fields for almost twenty years. From the "Author's Preface", it can be understood that his relationship with superconductivity has gone through three stages, fascinated by superconductivity (university), associated with superconductivity (graduate school), and superconductivity in love (work), he was also lucky to catch up with the research boom of iron-based superconductivity, and published hundreds of high-level research papers in the past ten years. His feelings for superconductivity are very deep, and the "Afterword" says that the concept of the book began in 2009, began to write in 2015, took three years to complete the first draft, and took three years to revise it, and met with everyone in the form of a book.

The introduction of superconductivity in middle school physics in the past is a passing, only mentioning that it has no resistance, but it has to work at a very low temperature; now the middle school physics will mention some applications, and popular science articles will talk about superconductivity having won several Nobel Prizes, but they are very scattered. The first chapter of the book, "The Age of Enlightenment", from ancient myths to the budding of science, from the earliest observations of electricity and magnetism in China and ancient Greece, to the discovery of the mysteries of electricity and magnetism by modern Western science, can give you a rough understanding of the history of science related to superconductivity (the "previous life" of superconductivity). The second chapter, "The Golden Stone Age," introduces the development of cryogenic technology, the discovery of superconductivity phenomena, and the establishment of superconductivity theory; from Onnis liquefies helium and discovers the superconductivity of mercury, to the complete resistance of superconductors to the effects of macroscopic quantum interference; from several successful iconoristic theories to many failed theoretical attempts (the participants are not short of great scientists such as Einstein, Bohr, Heisenberg, and Feynman), and finally ushers in the successful theories of Barding, Cooper, and Schlieffer (BCS superconductivity microscopic theory). The contents of these two chapters are very easy to understand, and interested middle school students can also understand. But there are some details that even I knew for the first time, such as Einstein, Ehrenforst, Lang Zhiwan and Wais, who had a close relationship with Onnis, and there was a photo showing them discussing problems together in Onnis's house, and the formula of quantum mechanics seemed to be written on the small blackboard.

I'm a few years older than I am, and I have something to do with superconductivity. I participated in the 1987 National Physics Competition for Middle School Students, and there was a question I still remember:

"In recent years, people have made superconducting materials with high transition temperatures, one of which is yttrium, barium, (), (), according to reports, the zero resistance temperature of such superconducting materials developed by the mainland has reached about () K. Before the advent of such superconducting materials, the zero resistance temperature of superconducting materials only reached about (). ”

This is the first time I have heard of high-temperature superconductivity, and Chinese scientists have attracted the world's attention on the stage of superconductivity research. This part appears in the fourth chapter, "The Black Copper Age", which not only introduces the history of Bernoz and Müller's discovery of copper oxide high-temperature superconducting materials (including arduous exploration and easy awards, "easy but difficult"), but also talks about the fierce competition and the world-wide high-temperature superconductivity research boom, not only the situation of many participants, but also redrawn some of the data pictures of that year, and zhao Zhongxian's photos of returning home to ride a tricycle to pull honeycomb coal after giving a conference report at the Annual Conference of Physics in the United States. I know a little bit about these contents, as well as the various strange superconducting materials and strange physical properties introduced in the third chapter, "The Aoki Period", because I happened to study cryogenic physics in the Department of Physics of HKUST for a year. I think any interested college student can understand most of these two chapters (even middle school students can understand a lot), but there are also a lot of things I first learned about (and some parts that I don't understand very well now).

I don't study superconductivity myself, but I felt the boom in iron-based superconductivity research in 2008. Some of my colleagues and friends are doing research on related aspects, and I've heard many stories at conferences. Of course, Teacher Luo Huiqian has personal experience, and his lecture on the fifth chapter, "The Age of White Iron", is much more comprehensive, from which we can see a lot of new knowledge and the contributions made by many scientists on the mainland. Naturally, we will also ask that the superconductivity research power of the mainland is so strong, but why was it that the Japanese scientist Hideo Hosono was the first to discover iron-based superconductivity? In addition, I would like to warn the reader that this chapter is a bit too cutting-edge, some of the pictures seem to be taken from academic articles (perhaps a review of academic articles), when you encounter parts that you can't understand, you can consider jumping straight over like me.

Since the discovery of superconductivity in Onnis in 1911, superconductivity research has been more than 100 years, and the Nobel Prize in Physics has been awarded 5 times, but superconductivity research is still prosperous, and the dream of room temperature superconductivity has still not been realized. The final chapter, "Cloud Dream Era", introduces the latest advances in current research, including "Regulation of Superconductivity by Pressure" (an article published in the academic journal Nature in 2020 claims that superconductivity of 15 degrees Celsius is achieved under high-voltage conditions), and superconductivity research is still promising!

It's just a few flashy introductions, and there's a lot of interesting stuff in the book. For example, interesting demonstrations (frogs in magnetic levitation, mice on the "flying carpet"); solid applications (nuclear magnetic resonance in hospitals, high-temperature superconducting cables for lossless transmission); advanced ideas (superconducting quantum computing, superconducting terahertz systems); more theories (I won't cover this), and even many oolong events that claim to achieve room-temperature superconductivity (this is also very interesting, I will not spoil).

In short, "Superconducting Small Times" is a very interesting popular science book about superconductivity, and anyone who cares about superconductivity can take a look. Whether you are a middle school student or a college student, whether you are a professional or a general reader, you can gain something, and everyone's harvest may be different. Even if you're a graduate student planning to work on superconductivity, you can benefit from it, and perhaps even more so – because some of the content here is simply live reports from the frontiers of science!

Special mention

1. Enter the "Boutique Column" at the bottom menu of the "Return to Simplicity" WeChat public account to view the series of popular science articles on different topics.

2. "Return to Park" provides the function of retrieving articles on a monthly basis. Follow the official account, reply to the four-digit year + month, such as "1903", you can get the index of articles in March 2019, and so on.

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