A team of scientists from Brown University in the United States has discovered a new class of quantum particles that behave in unexpected ways.
Subatomic particles can exist in two places at once, pass through solid barriers, and even communicate instantaneously across great distances. Recently, a team of scientists discovered a new class, called fractional excitations.
“Our findings point to a entirely new class of quantum particles that do not carry a general charge, but follow unique quantum statistics”, explained Jia Li, cited by .
“The most exciting part is that this discovery unlocks a series of new quantum phases of matter, presenting a new challenge in future research, helping us to deepen our knowledge of fundamental physics and opening up new possibilities in quantum computing,” he added.
The discovery revolves around a phenomenon known as fractional quantum Hall effectwhich is based on the classic Hall effect, whereby a magnetic field is applied to a material with an electric current to create a lateral voltage.
The quantum Hall effect, which happens at extremely low temperatures and high magnetic fields, shows that this lateral tension increases in clear, separate jumps. In the fractional quantum Hall effect, the steps become even more peculiar, increasing in fractional amounts – carrying a fraction of the charge of an electron.
During their experiments, the experts built a structure with two layers of graphene separated by an insulating hexagonal boron nitride crystal, which allowed the team to carefully control the movement of electrical charges and produce particles known as excitons.
Physicists then exposed the system to magnetic fields millions of times stronger than those on Earth, revealing the fractional excitations with unusual behaviors.
Although fundamental particles can fall into two categories (bosons and fermions), fractional excitons do not fit perfectly into either of them. During the experiment, his behavior showed tendencies of both, and could be characterized as a hybrid of the two.
“This unexpected behavior suggests that fractional excitons may represent an entirely new class of particles with unique quantum properties,” said researcher Naiyuan Zhang, who contributed to the development of the recently published in Nature.
