By Liz Leitch

Athens, Ohio – Princeton University nanoscientist Ali Yazdani served as an honored guest and spoke at the Ohio University physics and astronomy department’s weekly colloquium on May 4, 2007.

In his speech titled “Quantum Tunneling of Electrons and the Riddle of High Temperature Superconductivity,” Yazdani discussed his lab group’s research on the pairing of electrons in two-dimensional superconductors during the superconducting state.

During this state, electrons combine in what are called cooper pairs.  Yazdani’s lab is working to better understand this superconducting state when a magnetic field is applied.

“We have found that paring is a local phenomenon and is largely dependent on temperature,” said Yazdani who discussed that the critical temperature was not the highest temperature that contained superconductivity within nano-sized regions on the surface.

Yazdani is currently a professor of physics at Princeton University.  He has studied with Donald Eigler at the IBM Almaden Research Center, and in 2000 he was the recipient of the Beckman Fellowship at the Center for Advance Study at the University of Illinois.