The conference “Fundamental Problems of High Temperature Superconductivity-2025” (FPS’25), is the 6th conference in row, organized by the P.N. Lebedev Physical Institute. One of preceding conferences FPS’11 was held in the year celebrating the 100th anniversary of the discovery of superconductivity. Its scientific content was mainly devoted to the ‘iron-based superconductors’ a new class of high-temperature superconductors discovered in 2008 whose physical research reached maturity by 2011.
The years preceding FPS’25 have been also exciting for superconductivity due to the advent of the hydrogen sulfide (2014) with the record critical Tc value 203K [2], with impressive achievements in the interfacial superconductivity, including LaAlO3/SrTiO3 interface [3] and FeSe monolayers on the SrTiO3 [4], and with the emergence of very interesting physics of the topologically non-trivial materials, including the topological superconductivity [5]. Also, in the fall of 2016, the HTS-community commemorated the 100th birthday of Vitaly Ginzburg, a Nobel laureate, great scientist and a great enthusiast of the High temperature superconductivity. Subsequent conferences after FPS’15 have been postponed due to the pandemic and other unforeseen events that prevented the meeting of participants from different regions and countries.
The discovery of the high-temperature superconductivity in the whole class of binary and ternary polyhydrides [6] is important not only due to their record high Tc value. More importantly, it has injected a new vitality into the wineskins of the conventional electron-phonon pairing, already revitalizing with the discovery of MgB2. There seems to be a lot of potential in searching for other materials in which conventional superconductivity may occur at high temperatures [6]. This finding and subsequent experiments give reason for hoping that superconductivity can even occur at room temperature [7-9] and at ambient pressure. Also, this discovery opens up routes and encourages researchers for designing new superconducting materials capable for practical applications.
Despite the almost 40-year history of HTSC in cuprates, their extremely complex physics continues to pose a challenge to researchers. Magnetism, which has traditionally been viewed as the antagonist of superconductivity, has recently introduced new physics in superconductors with magnetic ordering of atoms. Another new twist in research promises combinations of topological properties and superconductivity, either in a single material or in layered structures.
On the practical application side, new iron-based HTS materials obtain a good chance to become successors of Nb3Sn and NbTi wires, due to their superior performance and a simpler manufacturing technology.
The FPS Conference considers complexity and promise of the novel materials, and causes the scientific community to more freely share the ideas and results in the field of superconductivity. It became a tradition to publish selected FPS’15 papers collection in the Journal Superconductivity and Novel Magnetism (Springer). This FPS’25 conference is no exception to this tradition. We will be delighted to have received contributions from the leading researchers in the field.
We welcome all participants of FPS’25, wish them creative success and look forward to new discoveries!
Michael Sadovskii (Institute of Electrophysics, RAS, Ekaterinburg, Russia)
Vladimir Pudalov (P.N. Lebedev Physical Institute, RAS, Moscow, Russia)
Co-Chairs, Program Committee