Recent Advances in High-Temperature Superconductivity

Recent experimental and theoretical developments in high-temperature superconductivity are reviewed, and the empirically asymmetric behavior between hole-doped and electron-doped cuprates is contrasted. A number of phenomena previously considered as essential for the formation of cuprate superconductivity, such as the pairing symmetry, pseudogap phenomenon, gapped incommensurate spin fluctuations and charged stripes, are found to be non-universal, and are likely the consequence of competing orders. It is suggested that the only ubiquitous properties among all cuprates are the strong electronic correlation and antiferromagnetic spin interaction in the CuO2 planes.