Superconductivity and spin fluctuations

In the conventional superconductors, the Cooper pairs are mediated by phonons, which is a process where only the correlations between the phonons and the charge properties of the electrons are needed. However, superconductivity can also be derived from other types of elementary excitations. The spin fluctuations are arguably the most promising candidate that can mediate such unconventional superconductivity. In some of the important systems such as cuprates, Fe-based superconductors and heavy-fermion superconductors, spin fluctuations play a key role in the mechanism of their superconductivity although there are still many debates. In this paper, we will give a brief review on the correlation between the spin fluctuations and superconductivity.