Interplay between electrons and phonons

The image on the left shows the amount of energy it takes to "glue" the electron pair together as a function of position, which is essentially random (the same image in a low-temperature superconductor, in contrast, would be all the same colour). The image on the right shows the energy of the lattice vibrations in the same region (in both images red and blue represent low and high energies). Taken together these images show that, contrary to conventional wisdom, there is some sort of interplay between the paired up electrons and the crystal lattice (image courtesy of Nature ).

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