cooper pairs in superconductors

Hi,

I was reading that in superconductors electrons form "cooper pairs" with a net magnetic charge of zero. I was wondering what happens to these electrons when they accelerate, do they radiate like normal electrons or will the radiation cancel out and not radiate, ie. in this case a superconducting "antenna" would not radiate anything.

Or does the zero net magnetic charge only apply to DC current losses?

cheers, Jamie

Reply to
Jamie M
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A particle with a magnetic charge would be a magnetic monopole. They exist in some obsolete versions of the standard model, but have (IIRC) been proven to be impossible in a universe that has electric monopoles (i.e., electrically charged particles).

Cooper (with a capital C -- they're named after Leon Cooper) pairs are pairs of electrons with opposite spin; the sum of the spin in the two electrons is zero, which means that the pair makes a boson. That boson still has a charge, and it still moves around, so it's still going to induce a magnetic field according to Ampere's law. That doesn't have anything to do with the spins of the electrons involved.

--
Tim Wescott 
Control system and signal processing consulting 
www.wescottdesign.com
Reply to
Tim Wescott

I don't think cyclotron radiation is a useful mechanism of radiation in conductors.

Superconductors are lossy at AC. Flux pinning in HTSCs is one example (hysteretic loss, I suppose). LTSCs can still achieve high Q factors (e.g., 3 x 10^7 for properly prepared Nb resonators at 4 K -- better than quartz crystals), but weird surface effects make subtle differences (IIRC, a polished surface is good, but not actually the best).

Note also that the phenomenon has a fundamental frequency limit, hence why HTSCs don't suddenly turn from black to silver at Tc.

Tim

-- Seven Transistor Labs Electrical Engineering Consultation Website:

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Reply to
Tim Williams

"Tim Wescott"

** I'm sure glad it wasn't Sheldon Cooper .......
** But that guy didn't know thing about Quantum physics - way back in 1826 !!

Nor did he know the speed of light with any great accuracy OR that it was invariant between observers.

Just got lucky I guess.............

** Back in my last high school days, some smart arse physics dude informed me that practically the whole of Chemistry (ie chemical bonding) derived from the Z component of the spin of the electron.

True or not ?

.... Phil

Reply to
Phil Allison

LC ( was he resonant ?)

But we don't capitalize watt as in 10.3 watts.... Only when the single letter is used, llike, 10.3 W or kW or dB or whatever...

Are the rules different for things like this, as in Cooper pairs, etc ? Only really important to me if I'm working on a manual or something where I don't want to look too stooopid if I can help it.

Reply to
boB

Yes.

(...) Named phenomena are capitalized (e.g., Cooper pairs, Hoffman addition...), units are lowercase (not Proper Nouns) or abbreviated (in which case the symbols are used, e.g., tesla = T).

Tim

--
Seven Transistor Labs 
Electrical Engineering Consultation 
Website: http://seventransistorlabs.com
Reply to
Tim Williams

Hi,

A Cooper pair isn't a particle is a pair of particles, so could have a zero net magnetic charge without being a monopole.

I think the magnetic field comes from the spin, so if the spins cancel their should be no field. I guess under acceleration things get different, and maybe the Cooper pair charge becomes non-zero.

cheers, Jamie

>
Reply to
Jamie M

No, there can still be magnetic monopoles. There is a proof by (Dirac?) t hat if one magnetic monopole existed it would explain charge quantization. (Something to do with conservation of angular momentum I think.) (My pet theory is that magnetic monopoles exist.. but they are tightly bound up int o magnetic 'atoms'.)

George H.

Reply to
George Herold

d

No. Hmm, Well OK if by spin he just meant that electrons have spin 1/2 and that means they can't be in the same state. Electrons in atoms can have d ifferent amounts of angular momentum along the z-axis, but that doesn't eff ect the chemistry very much.. which is why I first wrote no. Most of chemi stry is how the outer electrons bond.. (get together.)

George H.

Reply to
George Herold

Z component, sure, but how does one then explain the *other four* orbitals that hold together the 99.99973% of chemistry? ;-)

But really, the only part about spin that affects everyday chemistry is it allows electrons to double up (if unwillingly). Molecules with single electron bonds exist, e.g., H2(+). Without spin pairing, it would be a very different universe, of course (not the least of which because all of QM would have to be torn up and rewritten..).

Tim

--
Seven Transistor Labs 
Electrical Engineering Consultation 
Website: http://seventransistorlabs.com
Reply to
Tim Williams

I'm not sure I understand what you're after ... not only Cooper pairs but also rest of the (observed) material in the world has zero magnetic charge. It is accelerated *electric* charge which radiates. Accelerated Cooper pairs, being electrically charged, do radiate.

Regards, Mikko

Reply to
reg

One of pet peeves is when people say the atom is empty. All this free space. There's no damn free space it's all full of electrons! My butt doesn't go through my seat cushion, because of the electrons. They think that because the electron is light it doesn't take up much space.. completely backwards. (I rant at my kids when this type of talk comes home from school. Their response is to roll their eyes.. there goes Dad again. :^) kids, they keep you humble.

George H.

Reply to
George Herold

Full isn't really a helpful description. You are imagining something like the plum pudding model of the atom that was comprehensively disproved by Rutherfords backscattered alpha particles.

It is correct to a very good approximation to say that the atom is more or less empty. But that there is an outer surface that due to like charges repelling behaves as if it is extremely tough.

White dwarf matter held up soley by electron degeneracy pressure is dense and in a neutron star the matter is truly nuclear dense. There is a conjecture that certain repeat supernovae recently observed have condensed into an even denser state of matter nominally a quark star.

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The jury is still out on this one...

Whenever you try to look for an electron then it is tiny, but in the context of an atom they are neatly smeared out across space and time in a manner consistent with Schrodinger's equation (or rather its relativistic cousin the Dirac equation). The wavefunction amplitude tells you how likely you are to see it in a particular position.

--
Regards, 
Martin Brown
Reply to
Martin Brown

space. There's no damn free space it's all full of electrons!

Huh? No I'm not! The plum pudding model had little electrons in a sea of positive charge.

OK, I've had this discussion before with other physicists. It's not repuls ive charges that keeps electrons from one atom out of the other. It's the Pauli exclusion principle. (electrons are spin 1/2 fermions.)

If you want to talk about blasting high energy particles through atoms then I guess I don't care if you call it mostly empty or not. But that's *not* how we typically deal with atoms every day. The atom is totally full with electrons when it comes to touching it with another electron.. like the on es in the atoms on the end of your finger.

Hmm I'm not very current on my astronomy/ stellar physics. But in a white dwarf aren't the electrons stripped from the atoms? There's enough energy s o that everyone is ionized. Again not a very common place example. So let 's stick with atoms.

I'm not going to have the patience (or time) to show you that repulsive cha rge is not at work in atom to atom repulsion. (or not the dominate cause.) I could try an appeal to authority... but that's not very satisfying eithe r. Maybe I can just ask you to read and think about it. I'm sorta 90% su re I've got a decent picture of how it works. And this is a perhaps a chan ce for you to make a 'tweak' to your model of the universe. (I hope that d oesn't sound condescending. I get the feeling you're much smarter than I a m.) When I try and think more deeply about it... how do the electron orbi tals distort when atoms are pushed together.. and what exactly is the "stat e" of this distorted outer shell electron.. it all gets confusing.

Light things take up more space in QM than heavy things. That is not somet hing people find easy to understand.

George H.

pace.. completely backwards. (I rant at my kids when this type of talk com es home from school. Their response is to roll their eyes.. there goes Dad again. :^)

Reply to
George Herold

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