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From left, researchers Cyprian Lewandowski, Aman Kumar and Hitesh Changlani. (Devin Bittner\/FSU College of Arts and Sciences)\t\t<\/p>\n\t\tFrom left, researchers Cyprian Lewandowski, Aman Kumar and Hitesh Changlani. (Devin Bittner\/FSU College of Arts and Sciences)\t\t<\/p>\n
Electricity powers our lives, including our cars, phones, computers and more, through the movement of electrons within a circuit. While we can\u2019t see these electrons, electric currents moving through a conductor flow like water through a pipe to produce electricity.<\/p>\n
Certain materials, however, allow that electron flow to \u201cfreeze\u201d into crystallized shapes, triggering a transition in the state of matter that the electrons collectively form. This turns the material from a conductor to an insulator, stopping the flow of electrons and providing a unique window into their complex behavior. This phenomenon makes possible new technologies in quantum computing, advanced superconductivity for energy and medical imaging, lighting, and highly precise atomic clocks.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A team of Florida State University-based physicists, including\u00a0National High Magnetic Field Laboratory<\/a>\u00a0Dirac Postdoctoral Fellow Aman Kumar, Associate Professor Hitesh\u00a0Changlani\u00a0and Assistant Professor Cyprian Lewandowski, have\u00a0shown\u00a0the conditions necessary to stabilize a phase of matter in which electrons exist\u00a0in\u00a0a solid crystalline lattice\u00a0but\u00a0can\u00a0\u201cmelt\u201d into a liquid state, known as a generalized Wigner crystal.\u00a0Their\u00a0work was published in\u00a0npj Quantum Materials<\/a>, a Nature publication.\u00a0<\/p>\n HOW IT WORKS \u201cIn our study, we determined which\u00a0\u2018quantum knobs\u2019\u00a0to turn to trigger this phase transition and achieve a generalized Wigner crystal, which uses a 2D moir\u00e9 system and allows different crystalline shapes to form, like stripes or honeycomb crystals,\u00a0unlike\u00a0traditional Wigner crystals\u00a0that\u00a0only show a triangular lattice crystal,\u201d\u00a0Changlani\u00a0said.\u00a0<\/p>\n The researchers used FSU\u2019s Research Computing Center, an academic service unit of Information Technology Services, and the National Science Foundation\u2019s ACCESS, an advanced computing and data resource program under the Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure, to conduct calculations and run large-scale simulations using numerical techniques like exact diagonalization, density matrix renormalization group and Monte Carlo\u00a0simulations.\u00a0<\/p>\n In quantum mechanics, there are two pieces of quantum information for every electron. When dealing with hundreds and thousands of electrons, the amount of information becomes overwhelming. The algorithms and numerical techniques used by the team actively\u00a0simplify\u00a0this vast amount of information into digestible networks, allowing researchers to draw insights from it.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re able to mimic experimental findings via our theoretical understanding of the state of matter,\u201d Kumar said. \u201cWe conduct precise theoretical calculations using\u00a0state-of-the-art\u00a0tensor network calculations and exact diagonalization, a powerful numerical technique used in physics to collect details about a quantum Hamiltonian, which\u00a0represents\u00a0the total quantum energy in a system. Through this, we can provide a picture for how the crystal states came about and why\u00a0they\u2019re\u00a0favored in comparison to other energetically competitive states.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n QUANTUM\u00a0PINBALLS \u201cThis pinball phase is a very exciting phase of matter that we observed while researching the generalized Wigner crystal,\u201d Lewandowski said. \u201cSome electrons want to\u00a0freeze\u00a0and others want to float around, which means that some are insulating and some are conducting electricity. This is the first time this unique quantum mechanical effect has been\u00a0observed\u00a0and reported for the electron density we studied in our work.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n WHY IT MATTERS \u201cWhat causes something to be\u00a0insulating, conducting or magnetic? Can we transmute something into a different state?\u201d\u00a0Lewandowski\u00a0said. \u201cWe\u2019re\u00a0looking to predict where certain phases of matter exist and how one state can transition to another \u2014 when you think of turning a liquid into gas, you picture turning up a heat knob to get water to boil into steam. Here, it turns out there are other quantum knobs we can play with to manipulate states of matter, which can lead to impressive advances in experimental research.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Tuning these knobs, or energy scales, can drive phase transitions in electrons from solid to liquid. Studying Wigner crystals offers unique insights into quantum phases of matter and has potential applications in powerful quantum computing and in spintronics \u2014 a revolutionary new field in condensed-matter physics that can increase the memory and logic processing capability of nano-electronic devices while reducing power consumption and production costs.\u00a0<\/p>\n The research team hopes to\u00a0better understand\u00a0the cooperative behavior of electrons and address theoretical questions that can lead to breakthrough applications in quantum,\u00a0superconducting\u00a0and atomic technologies.\u00a0<\/p>\n To learn more about research conducted in FSU\u2019s Department of Physics, visit\u00a0physics.fsu.edu<\/a>. For\u00a0more\u00a0on the FSU-headquartered National High Magnetic Field laboratory, visit\u00a0nationalmaglab.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"From left, researchers Cyprian Lewandowski, Aman Kumar and Hitesh Changlani. (Devin Bittner\/FSU College of Arts and Sciences) Electricity…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":275737,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[199,79],"class_list":{"0":"post-275736","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-physics","8":"tag-physics","9":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275736","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=275736"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275736\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/275737"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=275736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=275736"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=275736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
At certain densities, electrons in two-dimensional systems are expected to form Wigner crystals, which\u00a0were first\u00a0theorized\u00a0in 1934.\u00a0These crystals have been\u00a0identified\u00a0in several recent experiments, but it\u00a0wasn\u2019t\u00a0clear how these unique states come about when accounting for\u00a0additional\u00a0quantum mechanical effects.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The team also discovered a new state of matter in which conducting and insulating properties coexist due to unusual electron behaviors. They found that the generalized Wigner crystal can partially \u201cmelt\u201d \u2014 while some electrons remained frozen, other electrons delocalized and began moving around the system, similar to a ball zooming around fixed pins in a pinball machine.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The research gives scientists a greater understanding of how to manipulate states of matter.\u00a0<\/p>\n