No concensus

A glance at how fierce the quarrels over the working mechanism of high Tc superconductors are !

No one is predicting a full understanding of high-temperature superconductivity any time soon — not least because such an account would have to make sense of the huge number of papers. “A rich enough theory should explain everything and not just cherry pick,” says David Pines, a physicist from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
But it’s not always clear exactly what needs to be explained. Roughly 15 years ago, for example, researchers discovered that some high-temperature superconductors allow electron pairs to form above the transition temperature. In this ‘pseudogap’ regime, the material
spontaneously organizes itself into stripes: linear regions that act like rivers and carry electron pairs through the insulating landscape where electrons remain stuck in place. “It’s a precursor state to the superconducting state and is therefore fundamental to understanding this problem,” says Ali Yazdani, a physicist at Princeton University. Not so, says Pines, who thinks the pseudogap state “interferes with superconductivity but is not responsible for it”.
Much as physicists had to wait for highly developed quantum-mechanical tools to unlock the secret behind traditional superconductivity, researchers today may require future ideas to complete their task.
If nothing else, the field’s early quarrels have ensured that only the most determined researchers have stayed. Those remaining are perhaps humbled by their experiences. “I think our biggest problem has been human fallibility,” says Anderson. And perhaps these initial difficulties have helped to forge theories that can stand the test of time. “In the end, it’s your competitor that makes you strong,” says Shen