Unusual Quantum State of Matter Observed For the First Time

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Phys.Org: It's not every day that someone comes across a new state of matter in quantum physics, the scientific field devoted to describing the behavior of atomic and subatomic particles in order to elucidate their properties. Yet this is exactly what an international team of researchers that includes Andrea Bianchi, University of Montreal physics professor and researcher at the Regroupement quebecois sur les materiaux de pointe, and his students Avner Fitterman and Jeremi Dudemaine has done. In a recent article published in the scientific journalPhysical Review X, the researchers document a 'quantum spin liquid ground state' in a magnetic material created in Bianchi's lab: Ce2Zr2O7, a compound composed of cerium, zirconium and oxygen. In quantum physics, spin is an internal property of electrons linked to their rotation. It is spin that gives the material in a magnet its magnetic properties.

Ce2Zr2O7 is a cerium-based material with magnetic properties. 'The existence of this compound was known,' said Bianchi. 'Our breakthrough was creating it in a uniquely pure form. We used samples melted in an optical furnace to produce a near-perfect triangular arrangement of atoms and then checked the quantum state.' It was this near-perfect triangle that enabled Bianchi and his team at UdeM to create magnetic frustration in Ce2Zr2O7. Working with researchers at McMaster and Colorado State universities, Los Alamos National Laboratory and the Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex System in Dresden, Germany, they measured the compound's magnetic diffusion. 'Our measurements showed an overlapping particle function -- therefore no Bragg peaks -- a clear sign of the absence of classical magnetic order,' said Bianchi. 'We also observed a distribution of spins with continuously fluctuating directions, which is characteristic of spin liquids and magnetic frustration. This indicates that the material we created behaves like a true spin liquid at low temperatures.' After corroborating these observations with computer simulations, the team concluded that they were indeed witnessing a never-before-seen quantum state.

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