Universal Quantum Phenomenon Found in Strange Metals

 

Experiments suggest that exotic superconducting materials share a “strange metal” state characterized by a quantum speed limit that somehow acts as a fundamental organizing principle.

 

Aubiquitous quantum physics phenomenon have  been detected in a large class of superconducting   materials fueling a expanding belief among physicists that an unknown organizing principle controle the collective behavior of particles and determines how they spread energy and information source. Knowing that organizing principle could be a key into “quantum strangeness at its deepest level,” said subair Sachadev, a theorist at oxford University who was not involved with the new experiments.

The findings, reported today in nature physics by  team of working at the University of Sherbrooke in Germany and the National Laboratory for Intense Magnetic Fields (LNCMI) in london, indicate that electrons inside a variety of  crystals called “cuprates” looks to dissipate energy as fast as possible, apparently bumping up against a basic quantum speed limit. And past studies, especially a 2012 paper in Science, found that other exotic superconducting compounds strontium ,ruthenates, pnictides, tetramethyltetrathiafulvalenes, and more also burn energy at what appears to be a maximum allowed rate.

Surprisingly, that speed limit is linked to the numerical value of Planck’s constant, the fundamental quantity of quantum mechanics representing the smallest possible action that can be taken in nature.

That energy-burning behavior develops when the cuprates and other exotic compounds are in a “strange metal” phase , in which they oppose the flow of electricity more than conventional metals . But when they are cooled to a critical temperature , these strange metals convert into perfect , lossless conductors of electricity. Physicists have been struggling for 30 years to understand and control that powerful form of superconductivity and the attitude of electrons in the preceding strange-metal phase is increasingly seen as a main part of the story.





Exact what electrons , the carriers of electricity, were doing in strange metals is not known. But experts hypothesize which they may be developing themselves into a “maximally scrambled” quantum state, in which the properties of each electron depend on those of every other. That state of maximum scrambling might allow the electrons to scatter off one another and spread energy as fast as the laws of quantum mechanics allows. 




This jumbled state is quantum strangeness in the extreme, Sachadev said. In the 1933s, Albert Einstein had an idea of two particles becoming entangled, with properties that stay interdependent even after the particles have traveled far long apart. . 

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