Colloquium

Locality and inhomogeneity in superconductors and in DNA

A.V. Balatsky,   
Los Alamos National Laboratory,
Wednesday, February 15, 2006
Higgins 310, 4 pm

Since the discovery of high temperature superconductors the unanswered question about the nature of "superconducting glue" was dominating the research in this field. Recent advances in Scanning Tunneling Microscopy (STM) allow us to image local electronic properties of high temperature superconductors. STM reveals strong electronic inhomogeneities in these materials and are suggestive of a local "pairing boson" in these materials. I will review recent experiments and theoretical results that point to a local nature of the electron-boson interactions. This observation indicates a possibility of a very local "superconducting glue" in these materials. In the second part of my talk I will discuss the STM tunneling and sequence dependent "inhommogeneity" in DNA. This new approach could lead to alternatives in sequencing DNA with STM.