PLENARY SESSION 2PL

Tuesday, Feb. 22, 8:30 a.m. – 9:15 a.m., General Assembly Hall A (GRB)

Chair: Z.X. Zhao (Nat'l. Superconductivity Lab, Chinese Acad. Sci.)

2PL.1 Physical Properties of HTS - the Mysterious Goddess

Koichi Kitazawa, Dept. Appl. Chem., University of Tokyo, Hongo, Tokyo, 113-8656 Japan

Presenting Author: K. Kitazawa

From the very beginning of HTS research, surprises have been brought about one after another, which have made the HTS our Goddess with full of mysteries. When the first HTS material was discovered by Bednorz and Muller and identified of the material by us in 1986, it was said that understanding of the mechanism of HTS would take fives years.

In 1991 when M2S-HTSC Kanazawa conference was held, in reply at the press conference, Schrieffer spoke reminiscently "I thought it would have been solved by now. But now I have to admit that another five years seem to be necessary." Anderson then said "I would say that it may take another five years by the time people understand my theory." It has now turned out that both of them were wrong. It seems that they would be forced to say the same things again in this conference.

Our Goddess is still tempting us with the mysterious smile. Many properties have been examined but each one of them has been able to add just another feature to make the vast complexity of the Goddess even more so.

In this conference, the pseudo-gap and the stripe structure seem to become the hottest issues to be discussed as the recent messages the Goddess has sent to us.

Here in this review on physical properties of the HTS, I would like to attempt to collect the messages so far the Goddess has signaled to us.