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Fun physics phenomena12/27/2023 Many experiments in condensed matter physics can be performed on a tabletop by a single student in a lab at a relatively low cost. I mean this both in terms of the experiments (and calculations) that can be done and the science itself. Ĭondensed matter physics is simultaneously large and small. Do you want a two-dimensional universe? Maybe one with a slower speed of light-a slower cosmic speed limit? Both are realized in graphene, a fantastical material which is usually produced in the most mundane way possible: by taking a piece of scotch tape to a hunk of graphite rock mined out of the ground. Do you want a universe where magnets only have a north pole, but no south pole? This was realized inside so-called Pyrochlore materials, which were synthesized in a lab and whose peculiar magnetic structure gives rise to quasiparticles, which behave like magnetic monopoles. We live in one universe, but crystalline solids allow us to create or discover another universe with different properties. This juxtaposition between the mundane and the fantastical also encompasses the ability of condensed matter physics to not only to describe nature, but also to manipulate nature. And diamond becomes superconducting if you dope it with an ample amount of boron. Iron (the main elemental constituent of steel) can be compressed (but not nearly as much as a neutron star) and become a superconductor or it can be alloyed with, say, arsenic and barium to make a different type of high-temperature superconductor. Some of the highest temperature superconductors out there are ceramic materials. These same materials can be implicated in my personal favorite phenomenon in condensed matter physics-superconductivity-in which a material suddenly loses its resistivity at low enough temperature and can conduct a dissipationless current (basically, a perpetual motion machine, if you can keep it cold enough). I am typing this answer at my dining room table, and I can use condensed matter physics to explain why various objects in my vicinity behave the way they do: why my ceramic coffee mug is good for handling hot liquids and would break if I dropped it, why my stainless steel fork does not attract a paper clip right now but would if I held it up to a big honking magnet, why my diamond is so flawless (when at a loss for a third item on a list, quote Beyoncé). ![]() These also connect to particle physics via quasiparticles that behave like massless Dirac and Weyl fermions (fundamental), and if they can be made superconducting in the proper way, it is predicted that they will also manifest majorana fermions which may be used for quantum computation (potentially useful).Ĭondensed matter physics is simultaneously mundane and fantastical. The quantum hall effect is the intellectual predecessor to a subfield of solid-state physics that is currently very trendy-topological materials, including topological insulators, Dirac semimetals and Weyl semimetals. On that note, condensed matter systems manifest other quasiparticles (objects that behave like particles inside the solid but don’t exist outside the solid) which are predicted in particle physics but never observed in free space, such as majorana fermions and magnetic monopoles. The former is used as a standard for electrical resistance (useful after all), and the latter exhibits electron-like quasiparticles that behave as if they have fractional charge (whaa?). not useful) and subjected to a large magnetic field (several Tesla, not useful), it exhibits quantized conductance comprising the integer and fractional quantum Hall effect, both of which garnered Nobel prizes in physics. When this specially-prepared material is cooled down to very low temperature (<4K, i.e. But those same semiconducting materials, when stacked on top of each other in a specific way, can produce a very pure 2-dimensional metal at the interface. Many people who know a little bit about solid state physics know that it gave us microscopic understanding of silicon and its native oxide, which gave us solid-state transistors, which gave us every computer and smartphone on the planet. With that disclaimer out of the way, back to our scheduled programming …Ĭondensed matter physics is both useful and fundamental. ![]() For this piece, I will focus on solid-state physics (the study of crystalline solids also called hard condensed matter) with which I am most familiar. Condensed matter physics in its broadest definition encompasses many different subfields (cold atoms, biophysics, soft matter, solid-state physics, etc.). This field studies many-atom systems that are condensed (i.e.
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