For the first time, Moore Foundation grantees at Princeton University have directly imaged the orbits of electrons moving in a magnetic field.
Their findings, published last week in Science magazine, illuminate an unusual collective behavior in electrons that suggest new ways of manipulating the charged particles. The study demonstrates that the electrons, when kept at very low temperatures where their quantum behaviors emerge, can spontaneously begin to travel in identical elliptical paths on the surface of a crystal of bismuth, forming a quantum liquid.
"This is the first time the orbits of electrons moving in a magnetic field have been directly visualized," said Ali Yazdani, a professor of physics at Princeton and a grantee through the foundation's Emergent Phenomena in Quantum Systems initiative. "In fact, it is our ability to image these orbits that allowed us to detect the formation of this strange quantum liquid."
Fundamental explorations of materials may provide the basis for faster and more efficient electronic technologies. One area of progress has been in two-dimensional materials, which allow control of electron motion by breaking the particles away from the constraints of the underlying crystal lattice.
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