It isindestructible an electron? Can it be cut in half? With the help of varioussupercomputers, an international team of physicists hassimulated the division of an electronthrough a “virtual crystal” which, under extremely low temperatures in the computer model, becomes a quantum fluid. By placing a virtual particle with the fundamental charge of an electron in the simulated quantum fluid, the particle was fractured into two parts, each of which contained half the negative charge of the original electron.
The simulations were carried out by physicist Matthew Hastings, from Duke University, in the USA, and his collaborators, Sergei Isakov from the University of Zurich, in Switzerland, and Roger Melko from the University of Waterloo, in Canada. . The results, published in the journalScience, are another example of how simulation experiments on ultracold atoms and other condensed materials can offer clues about the behavior of fundamental particles.
Many different types of materials, from superconducting to superfluid, can be formed when electrons condense and cool near absolute zero (-273.15ºC). This is the approximate temperature at which the particles stop moving and individual particles, such as electrons, can overcome their repulsion and cooperate.
The behavior ofcooperating particles, over time, it becomes indistinguishable from the actions of an individual particle and, according to Hastings, this phenomenon is very similar to what happens with sound. A sound is made up of waves, and each sound wave appears to be indivisible and act as an elementary particle, yet a sound wave is actually the collective motion of many atoms.
Under the ultra-cold condition, the electrons take on the same kind of appearance. Their collective motion is like the motion of an individual particle; But unlike sound waves, electrons and other cooperating particles – called collective excitations or quasiparticles – can do extraordinary things.
