Physical Properties of High-Tc Superconductors

Abstract

Four years of intensive research following J. Georg Bednorz and K. Alex Müller's discovery of high‐temperature superconductors has produced about 18 000 publications. An overview of all physical properties is thus beyond the scope of this article, so I will focus on a few topics that are widely perceived to hold the key to understanding these fascinating compounds. High critical temperatures are not the only interesting property of cuprate superconductors. An accumulation of consistent experimental results hints at the unusual nature of the metallic state above T c.