Quantum Physicists Find Paradoxical Material a Mashup of Three Different Phases at Once
upstart writes:
Using a combination of cutting-edge computational techniques, the scientists found that under special conditions, these triangular-patterned materials can end up in a mashup of three different phases at the same time. The competing phases overlap, with each wrestling for dominance. As a result, the material counterintuitively becomes more ordered when heated up, the scientists reported in Physical Review X.
"This is uncharted territory," says study lead author Alexander Wietek [...]. "Experimentalists had seen these peculiar properties, but they didn't know what the individual electrons in the materials were doing. Our role as theorists is to understand from the bottom up what's actually happening."
The findings could help researchers develop materials for future electronics, Wietek says. This is because the odd properties, he says, are indicative of an elusive state of matter sought for potential use in error-correcting quantum computing. [...] The researchers investigated how the electrons in the materials behave. Electrons determine almost all a material's properties, from magnetism to conductivity and even color.
Grasping the collective behavior of the electrons is a monumental task. When two particles interact, they become quantum mechanically entangled with one another. Even once they're separated, their fates remain entwined, and they can't be treated separately.
The behavior of electrons in a material depends on the layout of the atoms, and the triangular lattice arrangement is fascinating. That's because electrons have a spin, which can point either up or down. An electron might, for instance, want to have a different spin direction than its neighbors. But in a triangle with three atoms and only two spin directions, "someone is always going to be unhappy," Wietek says. "This causes the system to fluctuate because it doesn't really know what to do." Quantum physicists call this 'geometric frustration.'
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