Topological Theory of Ceramic High Temperature Superconductors

Abstract

Optimally doped ceramic superconductors (cuprates, pnictides, ...) exhibit transition temperatures Tc much larger than strongly coupled metallic superconductors like Pb (Tc= 7.2K, Eg/kTc = 4.5), and exhibit many universal features that appear to contradict the BCS theory of superconductivity based on attractive electron-phonon pairing interactions. Here I argue that this paradoxical simplicity is plausibly resolved within the framework of the Pauling-Phillips self-organized, hard-wired dopant network model of ceramic superconductors, which has previously explained many features of the normal-state transport properties of these materials and successfully predicted strict lowest upper bounds for Tc in the cuprate and pnictide families.