On 14 April, Hong Kong’s condensed-matter theorists gathered at Hong Kong Baptist University (HKBU) to discuss a new family of iron-based superconductors. The discovery, published barely two months earlier, had touched off an explosion of research activity (see Physics Today, Physics Today 0031-9228 61 5 2008 11 https://doi.org/10.1063/1.2930719 May 2008, page 11 ).
Visitors from the US and mainland China joined the locals. Three of the participants, the University of Hong Kong’s Fuchun Zhang and Zidan Wang and Stanford University’s Shoucheng Zhang, had already posted their respective proposals for the pairing symmetry on the arXiv e-print server. Jianxin Li of Nanjing University brought news of the latest results from mainland China, where experimenters were leading the race to make, characterize, and understand the superconductors.
The meeting at HKBU epitomized the current state of physics in Hong Kong. Condensed matter is one of the territory’s strengths, as is cooperation...
