How Close Are We to the Holy Grail of Room-Temperature Superconductors?

Re:How Close Are We to the Holy Grail of Room-Temperature Su... by magicalhippo on Sunday April 16, 2023 @07:16AM (#35589014)

No expert by any means, but SQUIDs[1] rely on superconductivity to detect tiny magnetic fields. One use is for recording neuron activity[2], so perhaps room-temperature superconductors could allow for a portable setup.

This article[3] goes into some of the advantages of a less restrictive setup, but the laser-pumped sensors they rely on still require a lot of additional hardware.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SQUID

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetoencephalography

[3]: https://hebergement.universite-paris-saclay.fr/supraconducti...

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Re:How Close Are We to the Holy Grail of Room-Temperature Su... by mikewarot on Sunday April 16, 2023 @10:34PM (#35596272)

I'd love to have a SQUID of my own to directly detect the |A| field that physics courses usually describe as "merely an abstraction" (Electromagnetic Vector Potential). I have some experiments I'd like to try.

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Re:How Close Are We to the Holy Grail of Room-Temperature Su... by dmlerner on Monday April 17, 2023 @08:19AM (#35599642)

You might enjoy the [Aharonov-Bohm effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aharonov%E2%80%93Bohm_effect). Quantum mechanics says we can in fact detect `A`. A similar effect exists for `phi`.

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