Origin of superconductivity in non-BCS superconductors

Determine the microscopic origin of superconductivity in non-BCS superconductors, including cuprate materials, where the underlying pairing mechanism remains unidentified.

Background

The paper notes that despite decades of research since the early proposals of high-temperature superconductivity without fundamental limits, the highest critical temperature achieved at ambient pressure remains that of the cuprates, and theoretical understanding has lagged. In particular, for non-BCS superconductors such as the cuprates, the fundamental mechanism responsible for superconductivity has not been conclusively established.

The authors frame their dielectric-environment engineering (resonant anti-shielding) approach as mechanism-agnostic, which can, in principle, enhance Cooper pairing irrespective of the specific pairing origin. This underscores the broader unresolved problem of identifying the pairing mechanism in non-BCS families, which remains a central obstacle to reliable predictive calculations of critical temperatures.

References

Equally disappointing has been theoretical progress, with the origin of superconductivity in non-BCS superconductors (including cuprate and possibly other families) remaining unknown or, at best, unclear.

— Enhancing superconductivity via engineered polaronic environment  (2408.03288 - Kempa et al., 2024) in Page 1, opening paragraph

At present, the data at hand does not allow us to unambiguously distinguish between these possibilities.

— Superconductivity at the metal-insulator phase boundary in a bulk nickelate at ambient pressure  (2609.19686 - Ahn et al., 17 Sep 2026) in Conclusion

Namely, the microscopic mechanism behind repulsively mediated pairing of electrons, the cornerstone of all high-$T_c$ superconductivity (and unconventional superconductivity more broadly), has not been accessible in this way so far, and remains unresolved.

— Predicting critical temperature in quantum simulators for high-$T_c$ superconductivity: the matrix product state plus mean field approach  (2608.18861 - Köhler et al., 19 Aug 2026) in Section 1, Introduction

Although the microscopic pairing mechanism and the fate of the Weyl topology at high pressure remain unresolved, this comparative picture provides a broader framework for understanding pressure-induced superconductivity in the TaXTe4 Weyl-semimetal family.

— Different reconstruction pathways toward superconductivity in TaRhTe4 and TaIrTe4 Weyl semimetals  (2609.25899 - Zhao et al., 22 Sep 2026) in Summary, final paragraph