The Hunt for Anyons in Oxide Superconductors is Inconclusive
DOI: 10.1063/1.2809983
As the date of the APS March meeting draws near, the conflicting results of two key experiments first aired by condensed matter physicists at last year’s gathering are no closer to being resolved. Indeed a third experiment, reported this fall, has further clouded the picture. The conflicting evidence concerns whether or not high‐temperature superconductors alter either the direction or ellipticity of polarized light passing through them. Such behavior might signal the breaking of time‐reversal invariance in these new oxide materials—precisely the effect predicted by proponents of theories that invoke anyons, or exotic objects obeying fractional statistics, to explain the superconductivity.
