Credit: Jörg Harms/Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter
In a high-temperature superconducting material known as YBCO, light from a laser causes oxygen atoms (red) to vibrate between layers of copper oxide that are just two molecules thick. (The copper atoms are shown in blue.) This jars atoms in those layers out of their normal positions in a way that likely favors superconductivity. In this short-lived state, the distance between copper oxide planes within a layer increases, while the distance between the layers decreases.