Ultracold atoms could provide 2-D window to exotic 1-D physics
Rice University physicists Matthew Foster and Seth Davis want to view a vexing quantum puzzle from an entirely new perspective. They just need the right vantage point and a place colder than deep space.
"There's a process in strongly interacting physics where fundamental particles, like electrons, can come together and behave as if they were a fraction of an electron," said Davis, a graduate student in Foster's research group. "It's called fractionalization. It's a really exotic, fundamental process that shows up theoretically in many places. It may have something to do with high-temperature superconductivity, and it could be useful for building quantum computers. But it's very hard to understand and even harder to measure."
In a recent paper in Physical Review Letters, Foster and Davis, both theoretical physicists, proposed an experiment to measure fractionalization not in electrons but in atoms so cold they follow the same quantum rules that dictate how electrons behave in quantum materials, a growing class of materials with exotic electronic and physical properties that governments and industry are eying for next-generation computers and electronic devices.
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