excitons tagged posts

Researchers at ETH Zurich have succeeded for the first time in trapping excitons—quasiparticles consisting of negatively charged electrons and positively charged holes—in a semiconductor material using controllable electric fields. The new technique is important for creating single photon sources as well as for basic research.

In semiconductor materials, electric current can be conducted both by electrons and by positively charged holes, or missing electrons. Light hitting the material can also excite electrons to a higher energy band, leaving behind a hole in the original band...

Researchers have discovered that light – in the form of a laser – can trigger a form of magnetism in a normally nonmagnetic material. This magnetism centers on the behavior of electrons...

Scientists identify a long-sought magnetic state predicted nearly 60 years ago. Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory have discovered a long-predicted magnetic state of matter called an “antiferromagnetic excitonic insulator.”

“Broadly speaking, this is a novel type of magnet,” said Brookhaven Lab physicist Mark Dean, senior author on a paper describing the research just published in Nature Communications. “Since magnetic materials lie at the heart of much of the technology around us, new types of magnets are both fundamentally fascinating and promising for future applications.”

The new magnetic state involves strong magnetic attraction between electrons in a layered material that make the electrons want to arrange their magnetic moments, o...

With the help of a “playground” they created for observing exotic physics, MIT scientists and colleagues have not only found a new way to manipulate magnetism in a material with light but have also realized a rare form of matter. The former could lead to applications including computer memory storage devices that can read or write information in a much faster way, while the latter introduces new physics.

A solid material is composed of different types of elementary particles, such as protons and neutrons. Also ubiquitous in such materials are “quasiparticles” that the public is less familiar with...