Physicists Detect Elusive Orbiton By Splitting Electron

[PlanckShift]

Physicists Detect Elusive Orbiton By "Splitting" Electron

"Condensed-matter physicists have managed to detect the third constituent of an electron — its 'orbiton'. Isolated electrons cannot be split into smaller components, earning them the designation of a fundamental particle. But in the 1980s, physicists predicted that electrons in a one-dimensional chain of atoms could be split into three quasiparticles: a 'holon' carrying the electron's charge, a 'spinon' carrying its spin and an 'orbiton' carrying its orbital location. In 1996, physicists split an electron into a holon and spinon. Now, van den Brink and his colleagues have broken an electron into an orbiton and a spinon (abstract). Orbitons could also aid the quest to build a quantum computer — one stumbling block has been that quantum effects are typically destroyed before calculations can be performed. But as orbital transitions are extremely fast, encoding information in orbitons could be one way to overcome that hurdle."

 

[Drakkith]

Do you have a link?

 

[bahamagreen]

Here's the trail...

Spin-orbital separation in the quasi-one-dimensional Mott insulator Sr2CuO3 (2012)

Observation of Spin-Charge Separation in One-Dimensional SrCuO2 (1996)

The Jahn-Teller effect and magnetism: transition metal compounds (1982)

 

[Drakkith]

Thanks!

 

[PlanckShift]

Here's the link to the original article.