Hitting a material with laser light can produce a flash of superconductivity — the ability to carry electric current with no loss — and may offer a path toward room-temperature conductivity.

In the case of a superconducting material known as yttrium barium copper oxide, or YBCO, experiments have shown that under certain conditions, knocking it out of equilibrium with a laser pulse allows it to superconduct — conduct electrical current with no loss — at much closer to room temperature than researchers expected. This could be a big deal, given that scientists have been pursuing room-temperature superconductors for more than three decades.

But do observations of this unstable state have any bearing on how high-temperature superconductors would work in the real world, where applications like power lines, maglev trains, particle accelerators and medical equipment require them to be stable?

A study published in Science Advances today suggests that the answer is yes.

«People thought that even though this type of study was useful, it was not very promising for future applications,» said Jun-Sik Lee, a staff scientist at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and leader of the international research team that carried out the study.

«But now we have shown that the fundamental physics of these unstable states are very similar to those of stable ones. So this opens up huge opportunities, including the possibility that other materials could also be nudged into a transient superconducting state with light. It’s an interesting state that we can’t see any other way.»

What does normal look like?

Story Source: Materials provided by DOE/SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. Original written by Glennda Chui. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.