The PI's will measure electric field gradients (efgs) in high- critical-temperature superconducting ceramic materials such as YBa2Cu3O9-x(x=2) using Perturbed Angular Correlation (PAC) Spectroscopy. The PAC technique measures the electric quadrupole interactions of radioactive probe nuclei, which have been substituted into specific lattice sites. The results may provide either evidence in support of the BCS theory or evidence of different mechanism of superconductivity.
