Splitting Up Cooper Pairs: Carbon Nanotubes

Gina Miller writes "Physical Review Focus has a story: Splitting Up Cooper Pairs July 15, 2002. Smitha Vishveshwara and coworkers at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) have claimed in the 15 July print issue of PRL to have come up with a solution for separation of the problematic Cooper pairs of joined electrons in superconductors. Using electrons with different ground states to produce quantum entanglement instead of insulation tunneling, which is the usual technique, but doesn't break the pairs, the group is opting for the electronic structure of the carbon nanotube. These new conditions, which produce Luttinger liquid, effectively split the Cooper pairs."