It is closely related to the Bose–Einstein condensate, a superfluid phase formed by bosonic atoms under similar conditions.
At lower velocities, energy is dissipated by the formation of quantized vortices, which act as "holes" in the medium where superfluidity breaks down.
As long as collisions with the ionic lattice of the solid do not supply enough energy to break the Cooper pairs, the electron fluid will be able to flow without dissipation.
Soon after the publication of the BCS paper, several theorists proposed that a similar phenomenon could occur in fluids made up of fermions other than electrons, such as helium-3 atoms.
[a] When Eric Cornell and Carl Wieman produced a Bose–Einstein condensate from rubidium atoms in 1995, there naturally arose the prospect of creating a similar sort of condensate made from fermionic atoms, which would form a superfluid by the BCS mechanism.
However, early calculations indicated that the temperature required for producing Cooper pairing in atoms would be too cold to achieve.
He speculated that fermionic atoms could be coaxed into pairing up by subjecting them to a strong magnetic field.
In 2003, working on Holland's suggestion, Deborah Jin at JILA, Rudolf Grimm at the University of Innsbruck, and Wolfgang Ketterle at MIT managed to coax fermionic atoms into forming molecular bosons, which then underwent Bose–Einstein condensation.
A helium-3 atom is a fermion and at very low temperatures, they form two-atom Cooper pairs which are bosonic and condense into a superfluid.