THE CHARACTERISTIC ELECTRONIC-STRUCTURE NEEDED FOR HIGH-TEMPERATURE SUPERCONDUCTIVITY - REPLY

The Comment by Jansen and Chandran advances no evidence to refute our basic thesis that high-temperature superconductivity can arise only in a material having sub-units each of which has a certain specific and characteristic electronic structure. The need for such an electronic structure accounts for why only a small number of basic types of high-temperature superconductor are known, the explanation of this observation providing a stringent test for any theory of high-temperature superconductivity. In contrast, experimentally observed variations in T(c) in cuprate materials, accounted for by Jansen and Chandran from their super-exchange model, hardly discriminate between different theories because it would appear that many models, including the magnon theory due to Goddard and co-workers, can also explain these variations.