Update: Dr. Wehlitz’s research results on Cooper pairs appeared
in the December 31, 2012 issue of Superconductor Week
Superconductivity-like Electron Pair Formation in Molecules
Discovered Usually, electrons try to avoid each other due to
their electrostatic repulsion. On occasion, however, they can
form a pair which has long been known in superconductivity
called a "Cooper pair," named after the physicist who first
described them. In work published in Physical Review Letters,
researchers from the Wehlitz group at SRC outline their
discovery that electrons can form pairs in some aromatic
molecules as small as benzene. A benzene molecule consists of
only 6 carbon atoms in a ring with one hydrogen atom attached to
each of them. The benzene ring allows the electrons, when the
molecule absorbs a photon with a certain amount of energy, to
flow around in a ring-shaped orbital where they can form a
2-electron pseudo particle just like a Cooper pair. This pair
formation is, on the one hand, independent of the specifi