{"id":140097,"date":"2022-06-03T02:02:56","date_gmt":"2022-06-03T07:02:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2022\/06\/electrons-in-a-crystal-found-to-exhibit-linked-and-knotted-quantum-twists"},"modified":"2022-06-03T02:02:56","modified_gmt":"2022-06-03T07:02:56","slug":"electrons-in-a-crystal-found-to-exhibit-linked-and-knotted-quantum-twists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2022\/06\/electrons-in-a-crystal-found-to-exhibit-linked-and-knotted-quantum-twists","title":{"rendered":"Electrons in a crystal found to exhibit linked and knotted quantum twists"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/electrons-in-a-crystal-found-to-exhibit-linked-and-knotted-quantum-twists.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>As physicists delve deeper into the quantum realm, they are discovering an infinitesimally small world composed of a strange and surprising array of links, knots and winding. Some quantum materials exhibit magnetic whirls called skyrmions\u2014unique configurations described as \u201csubatomic hurricanes.\u201d Others host a form of superconductivity that twists into vortices.<\/p>\n<p>Now, in an article published in <i>Nature<\/i> a Princeton-led team of physicists has discovered that electrons in <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/quantum+matter\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">quantum matter<\/a> can link to one another in strange new ways. The work brings together ideas in three areas of science\u2014condensed matter physics, topology, and <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/knot+theory\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">knot theory <\/a>\u2014in a new way, raising unexpected questions about the quantum properties of electronic systems.<\/p>\n<p>Topology is the branch of theoretical mathematics that studies geometric properties that can be deformed but not intrinsically changed. Topological quantum states first came to the public\u2019s attention in 2016 when three scientists, including Duncan Haldane, who is Princeton\u2019s Thomas D. Jones Professor of Mathematical Physics and Sherman Fairchild University Professor of Physics, were awarded the Nobel Prize for their theoretical prediction of topology in electronic materials.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As physicists delve deeper into the quantum realm, they are discovering an infinitesimally small world composed of a strange and surprising array of links, knots and winding. Some quantum materials exhibit magnetic whirls called skyrmions\u2014unique configurations described as \u201csubatomic hurricanes.\u201d Others host a form of superconductivity that twists into vortices. Now, in an article published [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":396,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[493,2229,1617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-140097","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-climatology","category-mathematics","category-quantum-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140097","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/396"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=140097"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140097\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=140097"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=140097"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=140097"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}