Andrea Cavalleri, Oxford University, UK, and co-workers have used light to turn a normal insulator into a superconductor.

A strong infrared laser pulse was used to perturb the positions of some of the atoms in the cuprate material. The compound, La_1.675Eu_0.2Sr_0.125CuO₄, was held at 20 K, and, on application of the pulse, almost instantaneously became a superconductor for a fraction of a second, before relaxing back to its normal state.

The researchers hope this could offer a new route to obtaining superconductivity at higher temperatures. If superconductors that work at room temperature could be achieved, it would open up many more technological applications.

• Light-Induced Superconductivity in a Stripe-Ordered Cuprate
  D. Fausti, R. I. Tobey, N. Dean, S. Kaiser, A. Dienst, M. C. Hoffmann, S. Pyon, T. Takayama, H. Takagi, A. Cavalleri,
  Science 2011, 331(6014), 189-191.
  DOI: 10.1126/science.1197294