Exotic states tagged posts

Physicists at RIKEN have developed an electronic device that hosts unusual states of matter, which could one day be useful for quantum computation.

When a material exists as an ultrathin layer—a mere one or a few atoms thick—it has totally different properties from thicker samples of the same material. That’s because confining electrons to a 2D plane gives rise to exotic states...

A schematic drawing of how a ring of exceptional points (shown in white) can be spawned from a Dirac point (a dot), and thus change the dispersion from the normal, widely known conical shape into an exotic lantern-like shape Credit: Courtesy of the researchers

Researchers create exotic states leading to new sensors and optical devices. The Dirac cone, named after Paul Dirac, started as a concept in particle and high-energy physics and has recently became important in condensed matter physics and material science. It describes aspects of graphene, suggesting the possibility of applications across various fields. Now physicists have found another phenomenon produced by the Dirac cone: It can spawn a “ring of exceptional points...