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.