Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 15 July 2026 · From issue 06
Short pulses of light may reveal hidden pairing that was already there, not create new pairing.
Marios H. Michael, Eugene Demler et al., Parametrically amplified Josephson plasma waves in YBa 2 Cu 3 O 6+ x : Evidence for local superconducting fluctuations up to the pseudogap temperature T ∗, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
A puzzling superconductor material can act briefly like a full superconductor even when it is much too warm to be one. In earlier experiments, scientists fired strong light pulses at this material and saw signals that looked like superconductivity, up to a very high temperature. Some scientists thought the light pulse was actually creating widespread pairing between electrons across the whole material. This paper offers a different explanation. It suggests tiny, short-range pairs of electrons already exist quietly in the material, even without any light pulse. The light pulse does not create new pairing. Instead, it makes tiny pairs that already exist between stacked layers briefly line up their currents. This model can explain the strange light signals without needing new long-range pairing. If true, it means the warm, strange phase of the material already hides some pairing behavior on its own.
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