BCS: 50 Years (book)
| BCS: 50 Years | |
|---|---|
| Author(s) | Leon N Cooper & Dmitri Feldman (Eds.) |
| Country | Singapore |
| Language | English |
| Subject(s) | Physics and Condensed matter physics |
| Genre(s) | Non-fiction; review volume |
| Publisher | World Scientific Publishing |
| Publication date | 2010 |
| Pages | 588 |
| ISBN | ISBN 978-981-4304-64-1 |
BCS: 50 Years is a review volume edited by Leon Cooper, a 1972 Nobel Laureate in Physics, and Dmitri Feldman of Brown University, first published in 2010.[1]
The book consists of 23 articles written by outstanding physicists, including many Nobel prize-winners, and presents the complete theory of superconductivity - a phenomenon where the electrical resistance of some metallic materials suddenly vanish at temperatures near absolute zero.
Contents |
Background
Fifty years ago, in 1957, John Bardeen, Leon Cooper and John Robert Schrieffer finally pieced together the puzzle of superconductivity, explaining in detail its mechanism and the associated effects.[2] The BCS theory, named after the three scientists, won Professor Cooper the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1972, which he shared with John Robert Schrieffer and his teacher, John Bardeen.[3]
Contents
Section 1: Historical Perspectives
The first section of the book describes important discoveries which led to the development of BCS theory.
- Chapter 1: "Remembrance of Superconductivity Past" by Leon N Cooper
- Chapter 2: "The Road to BCS" by John Robert Schrieffer
- Chapter 3: "Development of Concepts in Superconductivity" by John Bardeen
- Chapter 4: "Failed Theories of Superconductivity" by Jörg Schmalian
- Chapter 5: "Nuclear Magnetic Resonance and the BCS Theory" by Charles Pence Slichter
- Chapter 6: "Superconductivity: From Electron Interaction to Nuclear Superfluidity" by David Pines
- Chapter 7: "Developing BCS Ideas in the Former Soviet Union" by Lev P. Gor'kov
- Chapter 8: "BCS: The Scientific "Love of my Life"" by Philip Warren Anderson
Section 2: Fluctuations, Tunneling and Disorder
The second section focuses on quantum phenomena which occur in superconductors.
- Chapter 9: "SQUIDs: Then and Now" by John Clarke
- Chapter 10: "Resistance in Superconductors" by Bertrand I. Halperin, Gil Refael and Eugene Demler
- Chapter 11: "Cooper Pair Breaking" by Peter Fulde
- Chapter 12: "Superconductor-Insulator Transitions" by Allen M. Goldman
- Chapter 13: "Novel Phases of Vortices in Superconductors" by Pierre Le Doussal
- Chapter 14: "Breaking Translational Invariance by Population Imbalance: The Fulde-Ferrell-Larkin-Ovchinnikov States" by Gertrud Zwicknagl and Jochen Wosnitza
Section 3: New Superconductors
Section three of the book is on various experimental and theoretical methods used to identify new superconducting materials.
- Chapter 15: "Predicting and Explaining
and Other Properties of BCS Superconductor" by Marvin L. Cohen - Chapter 16: "The Evolution of HTS: -Experiment Perspectives" by Paul Chu
- Chapter 17: "The Evolution of High-Temperature Superconductivity: Theory Perspective" by Elihu Abrahams
Section 4: BCS Beyond Superconductivity
The final section of the book is on the application of BCS theory beyond the field of superconductivity.
- Chapter 18: "The Superfluid Phases of Liquid 3He: BCS Theory" by Anthony James Leggett
- Chapter 19: "Superfluidity in a Gas of Strongly Interacting Fermions" by Wolfgang Ketterle, Y. Shin, André Schirotzek and C. H. Schunk
- Chapter 20: "BCS from Nuclei and Neutron Stars to Quark Matter and Cold Atoms" by Gordon Baym
- Chapter 21: "Energy Gap, Mass Gap, and Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking" by Yoichiro Nambu
- Chapter 22: "BCS as Foundation and Inspiration: The Transmutation of Symmetry" by Frank Wilczek
- Chapter 23: "From BCS to the LHC" by Steven Weinberg
Reception
John Swain writing for CERN Courier describes the book as a wonderful review of a powerful unifying concept which covers an enormous range of phenomena.[4] Malcolm Beasley for Physics Today adds that the book will provide any person curious about superconductivity with something to enjoy.[5]
Additional information
13 papers from the book have been published concurrently as a special issue of the International Journal of Modern Physics B.[6]
See also
References
- ^ "BCS: 50 Years [eBook"]. http://ebooks.worldscinet.com. http://ebooks.worldscinet.com/ISBN/9789814304665/9789814304665.shtml. Retrieved 20 October 2011.
- ^ Bardeen, J.; Cooper, L. N; Schrieffer, J. R. (1957). "Theory of Superconductivity". Phys. Rev. 108 (5): 1175–1204. Bibcode 1957PhRv..108.1175B. doi:10.1103/PhysRev.108.1175.
- ^ "The Nobel Prize in Physics 1972". Nobel Foundation. http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1972/index.html. Retrieved 2011-10-11.
- ^ Swain, John (23 February 2011). "Book Review". CERN Courier. http://cerncourier.com/cws/article/cern/45165. Retrieved 11 October 2011.
- ^ Beasley, Malcolm (July 2011). "Book Review". Physics Today. http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/PT.3.1168. Retrieved 11 October 2011.
- ^ IJMPB Special Issue: 50 Years of BCS Theory