Kirill Parshukov and Andreas P. Schnyder of the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research have identified three exotic superconducting states potentially realizable within a newly discovered class of materials called altermagnets. Their work, grounded in the symmetry of these materials, reveals possibilities including a “half-and-half metal-superconductor” where Cooper pairs form from only one spin component of electrons.
One predicted superconductor exhibits an unusual fractional ac Josephson current for only one of the two spin polarizations, suggesting these aren’t merely theoretical constructs but potentially stable states of matter. The researchers constructed and tabulated all symmetry-allowed pairing functions for altermagnets, uncovering these novel states.
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