Physicists found a 'secret' second way for particles to pair up in superconductors, and it looks a lot like how ultracold atoms behave.
March 16, 2026
Original Paper
Two-channel physics in a lightly doped antiferromagnetic Mott insulator revealed by two-hole spectroscopy
arXiv · 2603.13222
The Takeaway
Understanding how electrons pair up to flow without resistance is one of physics' greatest challenges. Researchers identified a new, hybridized branch of 'hole pairs' that act like a bridge between different magnetic states, potentially revealing the long-sought trigger for high-temperature superconductivity.
From the abstract
Understanding pairing in the strong-coupling regime of doped Mott insulators remains an open problem in the context of cuprate superconductors. We perform ultra-high resolution numerical simulations of spectral functions in the highly underdoped $t-J$ model and discover two coupled branches of hole pairs emerging at low energies in the largely unexplored two-particle spectrum. As spin anisotropy is tuned from the Ising limit to the $SU(2)$-symmetric Heisenberg regime, the lowest $d$-wave pair ev