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Report from the organizers
REPORT FROM THE ORGANIZERS
The International Conference on High-Temperature Superconductors and Materials and Mechanisms of Superconductivity (HTSC-MZS) was held from February 29 to March 4, 1988 at the Congress Center Casino Interlaken (CCCI) in Switzerland. It was intended to succeed to the Conference on Materials and Mechanisms of Superconductivity organized at Ames (USA) in 1985, itself a continuation of the former Conferences on Superconductivity in d- and f-Band Metals held at Rochester (USA) in 1971 and 1976, La Jolla (USA) in 1979, and Karlsruhe ( F R G ) in 1982. It was inevitable that the discovery of the new high-To superconductors in 1986 and 1987 and its dramatic impact on research in this field gave a new dimension to this Conference, resulting in about 1150 attendees as compared to 200-300 in the previous meetings. The truly international character of the Conference was emphasized by the participation of delegates from 39 countries and all five continents, as listed below:
Participants (Listed by countries) Argentina Australia Austria Belgium Brasil Bulgaria Canada Czechoslovakia Denmark Egypt Federal Republic of Germany Finland France German Democratic Republic Greece Hungary India Ireland Israel Italy Japan
4 4 18 12 7 7 17 12 4 1 227 4 116 3 4 14 11 2 21 64 77
Malaysia Mexico Norway Principality of Liechtenstein People's Republic of China Philippines Poland Portugal Spain South Africa Sweden Switzerland Taiwan The Netherlands United Kingdom USA USSR Yugoslavia
1 4 9 1 14 1 20 5 17 1 27 169 2 42 46 121 32 9
Total: 1150 Participants
The participants were invited to a welcome party on Sunday evening, February 28, on which occasion the Conference was honoured by the local authorities with the presentation of the Golden Key of the community of Interlaken to K.A. Mfiller, Chairman of the Conference. The meeting was formally started on Monday, February 29, at 8.30 a.m. with a short welcome address by K.A. Mi.iller and a session of plenary talks. Apart from the plenary lectures, symposia and panel discussions on particular topics were organized in two parallel sessions ×iii
xiv
Report from the organizers
each day. Monday through Wednesday, evening sessions after dinner were scheduled and their organization was, in part, adapted to latest research progresses. Monday through Wednesday afternoons, 2 hours were reserved for the presentation of all contributed papers in poster form, without any other parallel activities. Altogether, 99 invited papers were given orally, and approximately 720 posters, including post-deadline papers, were presented. The longest working day was clearly on Tuesday, March 1, when a special night session with 24 oral presentations of latest developments in research of new materials was organized and which ended around 1.00 a.m. on Wednesday morning. It often happened that new results were eagerly awaited at the telefax facility of the Secretariat and were delivered still "wet" soon after arrival, a clear indication of the dawning of a new era of information transfer also in science. Although an overwhelming part of all the papers dealt with high-T~ Superconductivity, the Conference also covered other, still important and interesting topics in Superconductivity: - Heavy-Electron Materials Localization and Interactions Superconductivity and Magnetism - Binary and Multinary Compounds Thin Films and Superlattices - Organic Superconductors -
-
-
A great success, mainly due to a large amount of good luck with the development of the weather conditions, was the Conference excursion on Thursday afternoon which brought the Conference participants into the world of ice and snow in front of Eiger, M6nch and Jungfrau. On Friday afternoon, the final session was opened by an impressive greeting address by Bundesrat F. Cotti, Minister of Internal Affairs of the Swiss Government, followed by a review on current theoretical approaches to understand high-To superconductivity by P. Fulde and a Conference summary delivered in a very smooth manner by O. Fischer. Finally, after a few closing remarks by J.G. Bednorz, T.H. Geballe announced the decision of an international ad-hoc committee that the next Conference of this kind is planned for Autum 1989 on the West-Coast of the United States. The success of a scientific Conference depends to a large extent on the qualtity of the technical program. Thanks to many generous sponsors named on page x of these Proceedings, an attractive list of invited speakers could be put together and the financial help also allowed to sponsor the participation of many delegates with limited financial resources. The organization of this Conference by various Swiss Universities and the IBM Laboratory in Rtischlikon would not have been possible without the help of many people. In addition to those who are mentioned in the list of the Conference Organization, our special thanks go to Mrs. A. Schultze and Mrs. E. Rafailidis, both from ETH Ziirich, who took care of the huge amount of secretarial work, the ladies of the Proceedings Office who handled the flood of manuscripts, and Miss N. Huguelet (University of Neuchfitel), who helped to keep the financial details under control. Many students from ETH Ztirich and the Universities of Neuchfitel and Geneva helped in preparing the Conference bags and guaranteed the smooth flow of the technical sessions in the lecture halls and the poster areas under the supervision of H. Thomas (ETH Ziirich). The Conference could not have been started without the help of the charming ladies behind the registration desks who, as amateurs, handled the flood of arriving participants in an impeccable manner, and our thanks also go to the staff of the Verkehrsverein in Interlaken who handled the accommodation problem with great care, and the staff of CCCI who dealt with many small but all so important problems and requests. The Conference site also allowed to fit in the Exhibition of books and technical instruments in a very efficient but unobtrusive way. The list of Exhibitors is given on page xii. Looking back on it all, we have the impression that the Conference fulfilled its task. Thanks to all contributors, the scientific level was very high, the contacts between the participants seemed to flourish, the discus-
Report from the organizers
xv
with raw d a t a off the telefax were exciting and a clear highlight was, o f course, the increase o f the critical temperature o f oxide superconductors to 125 K during the Conference. We hope that most attendees went home with more knowledge and ideas than when they first arrived.
H.R. Ott C. Rossel P. Martinoli
The International Conference on High-Temperature Superconductors and Materials and Mechanisms of Superconductivity (HTSC-MZS) was held from February 29 to March 4, 1988 at the Congress Center Casino Interlaken (CCCI) in Switzerland. It was intended to succeed to the Conference on Materials and Mechanisms of Superconductivity organized at Ames (USA) in 1985, itself a continuation of the former Conferences on Superconductivity in d- and f-Band Metals held at Rochester (USA) in 1971 and 1976, La Jolla (USA) in 1979, and Karlsruhe ( F R G ) in 1982. It was inevitable that the discovery of the new high-To superconductors in 1986 and 1987 and its dramatic impact on research in this field gave a new dimension to this Conference, resulting in about 1150 attendees as compared to 200-300 in the previous meetings. The truly international character of the Conference was emphasized by the participation of delegates from 39 countries and all five continents, as listed below:
Participants (Listed by countries) Argentina Australia Austria Belgium Brasil Bulgaria Canada Czechoslovakia Denmark Egypt Federal Republic of Germany Finland France German Democratic Republic Greece Hungary India Ireland Israel Italy Japan
4 4 18 12 7 7 17 12 4 1 227 4 116 3 4 14 11 2 21 64 77
Malaysia Mexico Norway Principality of Liechtenstein People's Republic of China Philippines Poland Portugal Spain South Africa Sweden Switzerland Taiwan The Netherlands United Kingdom USA USSR Yugoslavia
1 4 9 1 14 1 20 5 17 1 27 169 2 42 46 121 32 9
Total: 1150 Participants
The participants were invited to a welcome party on Sunday evening, February 28, on which occasion the Conference was honoured by the local authorities with the presentation of the Golden Key of the community of Interlaken to K.A. Mfiller, Chairman of the Conference. The meeting was formally started on Monday, February 29, at 8.30 a.m. with a short welcome address by K.A. Mi.iller and a session of plenary talks. Apart from the plenary lectures, symposia and panel discussions on particular topics were organized in two parallel sessions ×iii
xiv
Report from the organizers
each day. Monday through Wednesday, evening sessions after dinner were scheduled and their organization was, in part, adapted to latest research progresses. Monday through Wednesday afternoons, 2 hours were reserved for the presentation of all contributed papers in poster form, without any other parallel activities. Altogether, 99 invited papers were given orally, and approximately 720 posters, including post-deadline papers, were presented. The longest working day was clearly on Tuesday, March 1, when a special night session with 24 oral presentations of latest developments in research of new materials was organized and which ended around 1.00 a.m. on Wednesday morning. It often happened that new results were eagerly awaited at the telefax facility of the Secretariat and were delivered still "wet" soon after arrival, a clear indication of the dawning of a new era of information transfer also in science. Although an overwhelming part of all the papers dealt with high-T~ Superconductivity, the Conference also covered other, still important and interesting topics in Superconductivity: - Heavy-Electron Materials Localization and Interactions Superconductivity and Magnetism - Binary and Multinary Compounds Thin Films and Superlattices - Organic Superconductors -
-
-
A great success, mainly due to a large amount of good luck with the development of the weather conditions, was the Conference excursion on Thursday afternoon which brought the Conference participants into the world of ice and snow in front of Eiger, M6nch and Jungfrau. On Friday afternoon, the final session was opened by an impressive greeting address by Bundesrat F. Cotti, Minister of Internal Affairs of the Swiss Government, followed by a review on current theoretical approaches to understand high-To superconductivity by P. Fulde and a Conference summary delivered in a very smooth manner by O. Fischer. Finally, after a few closing remarks by J.G. Bednorz, T.H. Geballe announced the decision of an international ad-hoc committee that the next Conference of this kind is planned for Autum 1989 on the West-Coast of the United States. The success of a scientific Conference depends to a large extent on the qualtity of the technical program. Thanks to many generous sponsors named on page x of these Proceedings, an attractive list of invited speakers could be put together and the financial help also allowed to sponsor the participation of many delegates with limited financial resources. The organization of this Conference by various Swiss Universities and the IBM Laboratory in Rtischlikon would not have been possible without the help of many people. In addition to those who are mentioned in the list of the Conference Organization, our special thanks go to Mrs. A. Schultze and Mrs. E. Rafailidis, both from ETH Ziirich, who took care of the huge amount of secretarial work, the ladies of the Proceedings Office who handled the flood of manuscripts, and Miss N. Huguelet (University of Neuchfitel), who helped to keep the financial details under control. Many students from ETH Ztirich and the Universities of Neuchfitel and Geneva helped in preparing the Conference bags and guaranteed the smooth flow of the technical sessions in the lecture halls and the poster areas under the supervision of H. Thomas (ETH Ziirich). The Conference could not have been started without the help of the charming ladies behind the registration desks who, as amateurs, handled the flood of arriving participants in an impeccable manner, and our thanks also go to the staff of the Verkehrsverein in Interlaken who handled the accommodation problem with great care, and the staff of CCCI who dealt with many small but all so important problems and requests. The Conference site also allowed to fit in the Exhibition of books and technical instruments in a very efficient but unobtrusive way. The list of Exhibitors is given on page xii. Looking back on it all, we have the impression that the Conference fulfilled its task. Thanks to all contributors, the scientific level was very high, the contacts between the participants seemed to flourish, the discus-
Report from the organizers
xv
with raw d a t a off the telefax were exciting and a clear highlight was, o f course, the increase o f the critical temperature o f oxide superconductors to 125 K during the Conference. We hope that most attendees went home with more knowledge and ideas than when they first arrived.
H.R. Ott C. Rossel P. Martinoli