As physicists dive into the quantum space, they discover an infinitely smaller world of strange and fantastic chains of knots, knots, and twists. Some quantum objects exhibit magnetic whirls called skyrmions — a unique arrangement defined as “subatomic storms.” Some hold a form of superconductivity that turns into vortices.
Princeton-led physicists discovered that quantum-based electrons could connect in remarkable new ways in an article published in Nature. The work brings together ideas in three areas of Science — condensed matter physics, topology, and knot theory — in a new way, raising unexpected questions about the quantum structures of electronic systems.
Topology is a branch of mathematical theory that studies geometric structures that can be deformed but not internally altered. Topological quantum regions began to gain public attention in 2016 when three scientists, including Duncan Haldane, Princeton’s Professor Thomas D. Jones of Mathematical Physics, and Sherman Fairchild University’s Professor of Physics, were awarded the Nobel Prize for topology. Electrical items.
Since then, researchers have sought to expand this area of study to build a deeper understanding of quantum mechanics, such as in the field of “quantum topology,” which aims to define the state of an electron is defined by its so-called wave activity. This has been a factor in the current study, said M. Zahid Hasan, Professor Eugene Higgins of Physics at Princeton University and co-author.
“We are studying structures related to the structure of electron wave activity,” Hasan said. “And now we’ve put it on a new frontier.”
An essential component of this new boundary is the quantum mechanical structure known as the Weyl loop, which involves the wrapping of the electron wave activity in a crystal. In a previous work published in Science in 2019, countless Weyl traps were found in an area made of cobalt, manganese, and gallium, with the chemical formula Co2MnGa. The study was led by Hasan and included many authors of the new research. They realized that Weyl’s light traps produced abnormal behavior under electrical and magnetic conditions, and this behavior persisted until it reached a temperature equal to room temperature.
However, the case of Co2MnGa appeared to differ from the performance of the waves considered in conventional topological theories. “Here instead we have linked loops – our newly discovered topology is a different genre and creates connecting numbers of different numbers,” said Tyler Cochran, a Princeton Physics student graduate and author of the new study.
Co2MnGa materials were developed by Professor Claudia Felser and her team at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids in Germany.
