Scientists spy an electron dance
A team of scientists led by researchers from Princeton University has discovered a new way that electrons behave in materials. The discovery could lead to new kinds of electronic devices.
Writing in the Friday, July 25, issue of the journal Science, a team led by N. Phuan Ong, a professor of physics at Princeton, has shown that electrons in the common element bismuth display a highly unusual pattern of behavior -- a dance, of sorts -- when subjected to a powerful magnetic field at ultra-low temperatures.
Normally, electrons in bismuth come in three different varieties. But in the experiment described by the researchers, the electrons in the magnetized, supercold sample simultaneously assumed the identity of all three classes of electrons, following a strict choreography that could only stem, they say, from the strange rules of quantum physics. Quantum mechanics is the area of physics that governs the behavior of objects in the microscopic world.