Macroscopic Quantum Mechanics

Your Playlist:

Description

Quantum mechanics provides a useful description of nature at the atomic and subatomic scale, but it also manifests itself in phenomena at macroscopic scales, including lasers, clouds of ultra-cold atoms, superfluids, and superconductivity. Among these phenomena, the recent discovery of new kinds of high-temperature superconducting materials holds the promise of many practical applications-but there is still no theory about how these materials work. See how researchers are approaching this problem from two different directions: a "top-down" approach, closely examining the materials themselves, and a "bottom-up" approach, looking at model systems that mimic the quantum interactions of the superconducting electrons inside the materials.