Monday, April 21, 2008

Who or What is RVB?

In an earlier entry related to the "No glue for cuprate superconductors", I mentioned that Phil Anderson might be right after all since this could be consistent with what he has been pushing all along. Of course, what I had in mind was his Resonating Valence Bonds (RVB) theory as applied to the cuprate superconductors. I believe he has argued for the non-conventional (as in no boson coupling) origin of the superconductivity in the cuprates. So this result is certainly in favor of that picture.

In any case, not sure if it was deliberate or terrific timing, there is a start of at least a couple of columns on RVB in Physics Today. The first article appeared in the April 2008 issue, which you can read for free even if you're not an APS member. In this article, he describes basically the history of RVB theory. But I think I am more interested in the teaser that he gave at the very end, which is supposed to describe "... the rise and fall and rise again of RVB's relevance to high Tc and other superconductors..."

Now THAT, is a physics cliff-hanger!

:)

Zz.

No comments: