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New State of Matter Discovered: The Dropleton

posted by LaminatorX on Monday March 03 2014, @10:00AM   Printer-friendly
from the (sigh)-still-no-Puerto-Ricoton dept.

amblivious writes:

"Researchers investigating the creation of biexcitons noticed an unexpected drop in energy when creating multiple biexcitons in gallium arsenide, leading to the discovery of a new state of matter; the dropleton. Excitons are quasi-particles created when a photon knocks an electron loose from a material, causing an electron hole. If the forces of other charges nearby keep the electron close enough to the hole a state known as an exciton forms where the combined electron and hole act together as though they are a single particle. Biexcitons consist of two of these quasi-particles and collectively behave like a molecule. In this discovery several excitons are behaving together in a 'quantum fog' and behave like a droplet, hence the name.

See the article in Nature for more information."

 
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  • (Score: 1) by Taibhsear on Tuesday March 04 2014, @07:45PM

    by Taibhsear (1464) on Tuesday March 04 2014, @07:45PM (#10905)

    instead, all the negative charges (electrons) in the material are hopping around to fill the vacancy, leading to an effective motion of the positive charge.

    This is the one part my brain was having trouble with. Thanks for clarifying. So the original electron that was excited to a higher energy level (creating the electron hole) can't just drop down to the original energy level and emit a photon (like in fluorescence, etc.) because of the sea of other electrons? And so another electron fills the first electron hole, leaving one behind themselves (the second electron hole), which yet another electron fills (creating a third hole)... Yes?

  • (Score: 2) by kebes on Friday March 07 2014, @01:22AM

    by kebes (1505) on Friday March 07 2014, @01:22AM (#12371)
    Yup.

    There are various ways the excited electron can lose energy and drop back down to the ground-state, thereby eliminating both the negative and positive free charges (fluorescence being one way, thermalization being another, ...). In the meantime, that electron vacancy ('hole') moves around because the sea of non-excited electrons are moving around trying to fill the vacancy... but they can't fill it, just move it from place to place.