Superconductivity: coherent "tunnelling" by a dielectric array of charge-carriers

Abstract

Superconduction manifests when a steady-state current flows through a material without an electric field being present. It is argued here that the absence of scattering of the charge-carriers, although absolutely necessary, is not sufficient to explain why an electric field is zero when a current flows between two contacts to a superconducting material. It is concluded that an electric field, and thus a resistance, must manifest unless (i) the charge-carriers form part of an array of dielectric charge centres, and (ii) the charge-carriers can increase their velocities without increasing their kinetic energies. A model is propoased which allows these requirements to manifest. The model is fitted to selected experimental results which have been published for low temperature metals, YBCO, and highly-doped p-type diamond. In each case a satisfactory description of the experimental results is demonstrated.