My watch list
my.chemeurope.com  
Login  

Cooper electron pair



A Cooper (electron) pair is a quasi-bound state of a pair of two electrons in a superconducting material. The composite entity behaves as a particle, with zero spin and charge twice that of an electron. Cooper pairs carry the current in a superconductor. This effect is most known concerning superconductivity.

A Cooper pair can form in a metal at low temperature. Despite the fact that the electrons Coulomb repel each other, it may be possible to get an overall attractive force between the two. This is commonly explained in terms of an indirect coupling between the electrons, mediated by the lattice of positive ions.

Cooper pairs are an integral part of the theory of low-temperature superconductors, BCS theory.

See also

  • BCS Theory
 
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Cooper_electron_pair". A list of authors is available in Wikipedia.
Your browser is not current. Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 does not support some functions on Chemie.DE