Many physical phenomena can be modeled with relatively simple math. But, in the quantum world there are a vast number of intriguing phenomena that emerge from the interactions of multiple particles—"many bodies" - which are notoriously difficult to model and simulate, even with powerful computers. Examples of quantum many body states with no classical analogue include superconductivity, superfluids, Bose-Einstein condensation, quark-gluon plasmas etc. As a result, many "quantum many-body" models remain theoretical, with little experimental backing. Now, scientists from EPFL and the Paul Scherrer Institut (PSI) have realized experimentally a new quantum many body state in a material representing a famous theoretical model called the "Shastry-Sutherland" model. The work is published in Nature Physics.
While there are several one-dimensional many-body models that can be solved exactly, there are but a handful in two-dimensions (and even fewer in three). Such models can be used as lighthouses, guiding and calibrating the development of new theoretical methods.
The Shastry-Sutherland model is one of the few 2D models that have an exact theoretical solution, which represents the quantum pairwise entanglement of magnetic moments in a square lattice structure. When conceived, the Shastry-Sutherland model seemed an abstract theoretical construct, but remarkably it was discovered that this model is realized experimentally in the material Sr2Cu(BO3)2.
Mohamed Zayed in the lab of Henrik Rønnow at EPFL and Christian Ruegg at PSI discovered that pressure could be used to tune the material away from the Shastry-Sutherland phase in such a manner that a so-called quantum phase transition to a completely new quantum many body state was reached.
Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2017-07-experimental-entanglement-d-quantum-material.html#jCp
Many physical phenomena can be modeled with relatively simple math. But, in the quantum world there are a vast number of intriguing phenomena that emerge from the interactions of multiple particles—"many bodies" - which are notoriously difficult to model and simulate, even with powerful computers. Examples of quantum many body states with no classical analogue include superconductivity, superfluids, Bose-Einstein condensation, quark-gluon plasmas etc. As a result, many "quantum many-body" models remain theoretical, with little experimental backing. Now, scientists from EPFL and the Paul Scherrer Institut (PSI) have realized experimentally a new quantum many body state in a material representing a famous theoretical model called the "Shastry-Sutherland" model. The work is published in Nature Physics.
While there are several one-dimensional many-body models that can be solved exactly, there are but a handful in two-dimensions (and even fewer in three). Such models can be used as lighthouses, guiding and calibrating the development of new theoretical methods.
The Shastry-Sutherland model is one of the few 2D models that have an exact theoretical solution, which represents the quantum pairwise entanglement of magnetic moments in a square lattice structure. When conceived, the Shastry-Sutherland model seemed an abstract theoretical construct, but remarkably it was discovered that this model is realized experimentally in the material Sr2Cu(BO3)2.
Mohamed Zayed in the lab of Henrik Rønnow at EPFL and Christian Ruegg at PSI discovered that pressure could be used to tune the material away from the Shastry-Sutherland phase in such a manner that a so-called quantum phase transition to a completely new quantum many bodystate was reached.