BCS: 50 Years

*BCS: 50 Years*
Hardcover edition
Author	Leon N Cooper & Dmitri Feldman (Eds.)
Country	Singapore
Language	English
Subject	Physics and Condensed matter physics
Genre	Non-fiction; review volume
Publisher	World Scientific Publishing
Publication date	2010
Pages	588
ISBN	978-981-4304-64-1

BCS: 50 Years is a review volume edited by Leon Cooper, a 1972 Nobel Laureate in Physics, and Dmitri Feldman of Brown University, first published in 2010.^[1]

The book consists of 23 articles written by outstanding physicists, including many Nobel prize-winners, and presents the complete theory of superconductivity - a phenomenon where the electrical resistance of some metallic materials suddenly vanish at temperatures near absolute zero.

Background

Fifty years ago, in 1957, John Bardeen, Leon Cooper and John Robert Schrieffer finally pieced together the puzzle of superconductivity, explaining in detail its mechanism and the associated effects.^[2] The BCS theory, named after the three scientists, won Professor Cooper the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1972, which he shared with John Robert Schrieffer and his teacher, John Bardeen.^[3]

Section 1: Historical Perspectives

The first section of the book describes important discoveries which led to the development of BCS theory.

Chapter 1: "Remembrance of Superconductivity Past" by Leon N Cooper
Chapter 2: "The Road to BCS" by John Robert Schrieffer
Chapter 3: "Development of Concepts in Superconductivity" by John Bardeen
Chapter 4: "Failed Theories of Superconductivity" by Jörg Schmalian
Chapter 5: "Nuclear Magnetic Resonance and the BCS Theory" by Charles Pence Slichter
Chapter 6: "Superconductivity: From Electron Interaction to Nuclear Superfluidity" by David Pines
Chapter 7: "Developing BCS Ideas in the Former Soviet Union" by Lev P. Gor'kov
Chapter 8: "BCS: The Scientific "Love of my Life"" by Philip Warren Anderson

Section 2: Fluctuations, Tunneling and Disorder

The second section focuses on quantum phenomena which occur in superconductors.

Chapter 9: "SQUIDs: Then and Now" by John Clarke
Chapter 10: "Resistance in Superconductors" by Bertrand I. Halperin, Gil Refael and Eugene Demler
Chapter 11: "Cooper Pair Breaking" by Peter Fulde
Chapter 12: "Superconductor-Insulator Transitions" by Allen M. Goldman
Chapter 13: "Novel Phases of Vortices in Superconductors" by Pierre Le Doussal
Chapter 14: "Breaking Translational Invariance by Population Imbalance: The Fulde-Ferrell-Larkin-Ovchinnikov States" by Gertrud Zwicknagl and Jochen Wosnitza

Section 3: New Superconductors

Section three of the book is on various experimental and theoretical methods used to identify new superconducting materials.

Chapter 15: "Predicting and Explaining $T_{c}$ and Other Properties of BCS Superconductor" by Marvin L. Cohen
Chapter 16: "The Evolution of HTS: $T_{c}$ -Experiment Perspectives" by Paul Chu
Chapter 17: "The Evolution of High-Temperature Superconductivity: Theory Perspective" by Elihu Abrahams

Section 4: BCS Beyond Superconductivity

The final section of the book is on the application of BCS theory beyond the field of superconductivity.

Chapter 18: "The Superfluid Phases of Liquid ³He: BCS Theory" by Anthony James Leggett
Chapter 19: "Superfluidity in a Gas of Strongly Interacting Fermions" by Wolfgang Ketterle, Y. Shin, André Schirotzek and C. H. Schunk
Chapter 20: "BCS from Nuclei and Neutron Stars to Quark Matter and Cold Atoms" by Gordon Baym
Chapter 21: "Energy Gap, Mass Gap, and Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking" by Yoichiro Nambu
Chapter 22: "BCS as Foundation and Inspiration: The Transmutation of Symmetry" by Frank Wilczek
Chapter 23: "From BCS to the LHC" by Steven Weinberg

Reception

John Swain writing for CERN Courier describes the book as a wonderful review of a powerful unifying concept which covers an enormous range of phenomena.^[4] Malcolm Beasley for Physics Today adds that the book will provide any person curious about superconductivity with something to enjoy.^[5] In addition, Jermey Matthews, the book editor from Physics Today, had chosen BCS: 50 years as one of the five books to put on your 2011 holiday wish list.^[6]

Additional information

13 papers from the book have been published concurrently as a special issue of the International Journal of Modern Physics B.^[7]

References

↑ "BCS: 50 Years [eBook]". http://ebooks.worldscinet.com. Retrieved 20 October 2011. External link in |work= (help)
↑ Bardeen, J.; Cooper, L. N; Schrieffer, J. R. (1957). "Theory of Superconductivity". Phys. Rev. 108 (5): 1175–1204. Bibcode:1957PhRv..108.1175B. doi:10.1103/PhysRev.108.1175.
↑ "The Nobel Prize in Physics 1972". Nobel Foundation. Retrieved 2011-10-11.
↑ Swain, John (23 February 2011). "Book Review". CERN Courier. Retrieved 11 October 2011.
↑ Beasley, Malcolm (July 2011). "Book Review". Physics Today. Retrieved 11 October 2011.
↑ "The year in reviews: Five books to put on your holiday wish list". http://www.physicstoday.org/. Retrieved 10 January 2012. External link in |work= (help)
↑ IJMPB Special Issue: 50 Years of BCS Theory

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