Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Emerging Tech
  3. News

Physicists just discovered a new state of matter called ‘quantum spin liquid’

Ed Oswald
By

quantum spin liquid matter
Image used with permission by copyright holder
Researchers with the University of Cambridge say they have the first real evidence of a new state of matter, some 40 years after it was first theorized.

Known as “quantum spin liquid,” the matter states causes normally unbreakable electrons to fracture into pieces, called “Majorana fermions.” These fermions are an important discovery: Physicists believe the material is crucial to further develop quantum computing. Computers employing Majorana fermions would be able to carry out calculations beyond the scope of modern computers quickly, they say.

Recommended Videos

Quantum spin liquid explains some of the odd behaviors inside magnetic materials. In these materials, the electrons should behave like small bar magnets, all aligning towards magnetic north when a material is cooled. But not all magnetic materials do this — if the material contains quantum spin liquid, the electrons don’t all line up and become entangled.

Related

“Until recently, we didn’t even know what the experimental fingerprints of a quantum spin liquid would look like,” researcher Dr. Dmitry Kovrizhin says. That created a challenge for the researchers, so they decided to employ neutron scattering techniques to look for evidence of fracturing.

What they found surprised them. The signatures matched nearly exactly with quantum spin liquid models theorized by physicist Phil Anderson in 1973. The results of their breakthrough were then published in the scientific journal Nature Materials on Monday.

Don’t get too excited just yet on its applications, though. Kovirzhin’s work is only the beginning, and as we’ve seen with quantum computing there is a lot of work to be done. For example, we’re only now starting to figure out quantum coding, and success in quantum computing itself is notably mixed. It’s still exciting regardless.

“It’s an important step for our understanding of quantum matter,” Kovrizhin says. “It’s fun to have another new quantum state that we’ve never seen before — it presents us with new possibilities to try new things.”

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Ed Oswald
Ed Oswald
Contributor
For fifteen years, Ed has written about the latest and greatest in gadgets and technology trends. At Digital Trends, he's…
Microsoft’s new quantum chip could help control thousands of qubits
IBM quantum computing

Microsoft doesn’t just make Windows and Surface tablets -- it’s also doing some pretty interesting work with quantum computers. And, at least according to the Redmond, Washington-based company, it’s just made a notable advance in this domain.

Working with researchers from the University of Sydney in Australia, the Microsoft investigators say they have found a way to control thousands of qubits, the basic units of quantum information that are equivalent to binary bits in a classical computer, at extremely low temperatures.

Read more
Quantum communication demonstrated by two hovering drones
Quantum drones 1

The groundwork is being laid for the quantum internet -- up in the air. Recently, researchers from Nanjing University in China demonstrated that it is possible to send entangled photons between a pair of drones, called Alice and Bob, hovering one kilometer apart.

Read more
A.I.’s next big challenge? Playing a quantum version of Go
alphago zero

When Google DeepMind’s AlphaGo program defeated the world’s greatest Go player in March 2016, it represented a major tech breakthrough. Go, a Chinese board game in which the goal is to surround more territory than your opponent, is a game that’s notoriously easy to learn but next to impossible to master. The total number of allowable board positions exceeds the total number of atoms in the observable universe. However, an A.I. still learned to defeat one of humanity’s best players.

But while cutting-edge technology made this possible, cutting-edge technology could also make mastering Go even more difficult for future machines -- thanks to the insertion of quantum computing concepts like entanglement to add a new element of randomness to the game.

Read more