Physicists at MIT have developed a new microscope using terahertz light to directly observe hidden quantum vibrations inside a superconducting material for the first time. The device compresses terahertz light to overcome its wavelength limitations, revealing frictionless electron flows in BSCCO. This breakthrough could advance understanding of superconductivity and terahertz-based communications.
Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have created a terahertz microscope that bypasses the diffraction limit, allowing them to image quantum-scale features in superconductors. Published in Nature in 2026, the study details how the team used spintronic emitters to generate short terahertz pulses and a Bragg mirror to focus the light onto tiny samples smaller than the light's wavelength, which spans hundreds of microns. This enabled observation of collective electron oscillations in bismuth strontium calcium copper oxide (BSCCO), a high-temperature superconductor cooled near absolute zero. The electrons moved as a superfluid, jiggling at terahertz frequencies in a frictionless state. > This new microscope now allows us to see a new mode of superconducting electrons that nobody has ever seen before, says Nuh Gedik, the Donner Professor of Physics at MIT. Lead author Alexander von Hoegen, a postdoc in MIT's Materials Research Laboratory, noted the challenge: > You might have a 10-micron sample, but your terahertz light has a 100-micron wavelength, so what you would mostly be measuring is air. The team, including Tommy Tai, Clifford Allington, Matthew Yeung, Jacob Pettine, Alexander Kossak, Byunghun Lee, and Geoffrey Beach, collaborated with scientists from Harvard University, Max Planck Institutes, and Brookhaven National Laboratory. Terahertz light, between microwaves and infrared, matches atomic vibrations and is non-ionizing, with potential in security, medical imaging, and high-speed wireless. Von Hoegen highlighted applications: > There's a huge push to take Wi-Fi or telecommunications to the next level, to terahertz frequencies. The microscope has detected distortions in terahertz fields from superconducting electron responses, opening ways to study other two-dimensional materials' excitations.