Interaction of Superconducting YBa2Cu(sub 3-x)Zn(sub x)O(sub 7-y) with MeV Radiation

When the high Tc superconductor Y-Ba-Cu-O is cooled with liquid nitrogen, the conduction holes form a macroscopic collective or entangled state. While collective effects have been observed with radiation energies up to 5 eV, no high-sensitivity experiments have previously been carried out to search for comparable effects with MeV radiation. Here an experiment using a pair of scintillation counters arranged to search for changes in the natural background of high energy radiation adjacent to a warm and cold Y-Ba-Cu-O superconductor is described. The experiment showed a shift toward higher pulse heights when the SC was cooled, with a 4 standard deviation excess of 9.12+/-2.28 events/ksec over the range of 0 to 18 MeV. The net difference spectrum shows a 5.5 standard deviation excess signal for the range of 3 to 6 MeV.