An international team of researchers, including a group of physicists from the University of Cambridge (UK) has found evidence of a mysterious new state of matter in real material. This state, known as quantum spin liquid, causes electrons – those seemingly indivisible building blocks of nature – to break into pieces. This state of matter was predicted by theory 40 years ago but has not been detected until now. We are facing a new milestone in physics.
The experts used neutron scattering techniques to try to obtain experimental evidence of electron fractionation in crystals of ruthenium chloride (RuCl3). Thus, they were able to measure the “signature” of these fractionated particles called “Majorana fermions” , inside a two-dimensional material that has a structure similar to that of graphene. The results, contrasted with the theoretical basis of decades ago, have been able to confirm this particular state of matter that was hidden inside certain magnetic materials described in the model of the Russian physicist Alexei Kitaev.
This breaking or fractionation of electrons, these Majorana fermions, could be used as the basis for future quantum computers, incredibly faster and more powerful than the current ones. These quantum computers would be capable of performing operations unimaginable today.
“It is a new quantum state of matter that had been predicted but had never been observed before, ” says Johannes Knolle, co-author of the work.
“ Until recently, we did not even know which fingerprints we would have to look for to detect a liquid state of quantum spin. For this reason, what we did in previous works was precisely to ask ourselves what we should observe if we were carrying out experiments on a possible quantum spin liquid ”, clarifies Dmitry Kovrizhin, also a co-author of the research.
The study has been published in the journal Nature Materials.
