Scientists demonstrate a new type of superconductivity that was once thought impossible.

Under certain conditions, electricity can flow through a medium or circuit with no resistance. This phenomenon is called superconductivity and can occur in several ways.

Until now, scientists have considered most of these different superconductivity excitation methods incompatible, but for the first time they have managed to combine two of these strategies. Scientists described the breakthrough in a new paper published Friday in the journal Science Advances.

The breakthrough concerns a so-called Bose-Einstein condensate or BEC, the fifth state of matter – like plasma, but at the other end of the thermal spectrum.

“A BEC is a unique state of matter because it is made not of particles but of waves,” Kozo Okazaki said in a press release.

“When they cool down to almost absolute zero, the atoms of some materials become smeared beyond space. This smear increases until atoms – which are now waves rather than particles – overlap and are indistinguishable, ”said Okazaki, an associate professor at the Institute of Solid State Physics at the University of Tokyo.

BECs behave like a uniform material with entirely new properties, such as superconductivity. Previously, BECs were only theoretical, but recently lab scientists have been able to create a superconducting BEC using a new material made of iron and selenium.

As already mentioned, there are other methods of achieving superconductivity. When some materials are cooled to absolute zero, a so-called Bardeen-Cooper-Shrieffer regime, or BCS, is obtained. The atoms of the material slow down and line up rigidly so that electrons can seamlessly pass through the material.

Although both the BEC and BCS regimes involve a dramatic deceleration of a material’s atoms by cooling the material to extremely cold temperatures, the two regimes are different.

Scientists have previously hypothesized that by combining the BEC and BCS states, researchers may be able to gain new insights into superconductivity phenomena.

“Demonstrating the superconductivity of BECs was a means to an end – we really hoped to explore the overlap between BEC and BCS,” Okazaki said. “This was an extreme challenge, but our unique apparatus and method of observation confirmed it: there is a smooth transition between these regimes. And this points to a more general theory behind superconductivity. It is an exciting time to work in this field.

Using an imaging technique called laser-assisted photoemission spectroscopy, Okazaki and his research partners were able to observe the behavior of electrons during the transition of the new material from BCS to BEC.

The experiments confirmed that the electrons behaved differently during the two regimes, differences that could eventually shed light on how superconductivity turns out to be a material quality.

Superconductivity has enormous potential, but the technology is not yet viable at the moment.

But with each new understanding of superconductivity mechanics, researchers hope to take a step closer to building a superconductor that doesn’t require extremely cold temperatures.

“If conclusive evidence of superconducting BECs is available, I believe this will encourage other researchers to study superconductivity at ever higher temperatures,” Okazaki said. “It may sound like science fiction at the moment, but if superconductivity can occur near ambient temperature, our ability to generate energy would dramatically increase and our energy needs would decrease.”