The effect of temperature on electrical conductivity in everyday metals is well understood. But in recent years, a class of materials that don’t seem to follow traditional electrical rules has caught the attention of scientists.
Understanding such exotic metals can provide insight into the quantum world. It can also help understand exotic phenomena such as high-temperature superconductivity.
New study by Chocolate University A physicist can lead us to deep insights. The team found that the metal exhibits a strange metallic behavior in a material. In ordinary metals, electrons carry an electric charge. But in this exotic mineral, this charge is carried by “wave-like” entities called Cooper pairs.
The Cooper pairs act as bosons that follow completely different rules than fermions. This is the first time scientists have observed the strange behavior of metals in a bosonian system.
According to scholars, “This discovery could help find an explanation for how exotic minerals work — something scientists have eluded for decades.”
Jim Vallis, professor of physics at Brown University and author of a related study, said, “We have two fundamentally different types of particles whose behavior converge around the puzzle. What it is saying is that any theory explaining the behavior of strange metals cannot be specific to any type of particle. It has to be more basic than that.”
The strange metal behavior was first discovered in coppersmiths. Cuprate is a class of material that is renowned for its high temperature superconductor. They conduct electricity without resistance at much higher temperatures than ordinary superconductors.
Cuprites work oddly even at temperatures above the critical temperature for superconductivity, unlike other minerals. A linear increase in temperature increases cuprates resistance.
The Fermian fluid theory determines the maximum rate at which electron scattering can occur. But exotic minerals don’t follow the rules of Fermi fluids. And how they work is still elusive.
Scientists only know about the relationship between temperature resistance in exotic metals. It seems to be related to two basic constants of nature: konstanta Boltzmann, which is the energy due to random thermal motion, and Constant Planck, which corresponds to the energy of the photon (particle of light).
Jim Vallis, professor of physics at Brown University and author of a related study, said, To try to understand what happens to this exotic mineral, people have applied a mathematical approach similar to that used to understand black holes. So there’s some very basic physics going on in these materials.”
In 1952, he discovered that electrons in ordinary superconductors work together to form Cooper pairs. The Cooper pair can glide through the atomic lattice without a hitch. Moreover, they can act as Bosons are composed of fermions.
Vallis said, Fermion and boson systems usually behave very differently. Unlike individual fermions, bosons are allowed to share the same quantum state, meaning they can move collectively like water molecules in ripples. “
In this new study, the scientists used a copper material called yttrium barium-copper oxide. Decorative material with small holes pushes the Cooper pair metal casing. The material is then cooled to just above the superconducting temperature to observe changes in its conductivity.
Like exotic fermions, they found metallic conductors of Cooper pairs that were linear with temperature.
Scientist taperAnd “This discovery will give theorists something new to chew on as they try to understand the strange behavior of metals.”
Vallis said, “It is a challenge for theorists to come up with an explanation for what we see in exotic metals. Our work shows that if you’re going to model charge transfer in exotic metals, that model should hold true for both fermions and bosons — even though these types of particles follow fundamentally different rules.”
Journal reference:
- Yang, C., Liu, H., Liu, Y. et al. Strange metal traces in the bosonian system. Nature 601, 205-210 (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-021-04239-y
–
