Until recently no one could explain why superconducting LEDs are brighter. The question arose last year when Japanese researchers were working on a device to study how Cooper pairs in superconducting niobium would emit light when combined with holes generated in a PN junction. Surprisingly, these researchers realized that their superconducting LED was much brighter than they could explain, even after taking superconductivity into account.
Recently, Yasuhiro Asano at Hokkaido University in Japan announced that the effect may be explained by two second order effects occurring together only on superconductors: the so called ‘giant oscillator strength’ combined with a resonant effect, which allow for much higher numbers of Cooper pairs than expected to combine with holes and produce photons.
For more information see Luminescence of a Cooper Pair and the physics arXiv blog
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