If you want to understand the personality of a material, study its electrons. Table salt forms cubic crystals because its atoms share electrons in that configuration; silver shines because its electrons absorb visible light and reradiate it back. Electron behavior causes nearly all material properties: hardness, conductivity, melting temperature.
Of late, physicists are intrigued by the way huge numbers of electrons can display collective quantum-mechanical behavior. In some materials, a trillion trillion electrons within a crystal can act as a unit, like fire ants clumping into a single mass to survive a flood. Physicists want to understand this collective behavior because of the potential link to exotic properties such as superconductivity, in which electricity can flow without any resistance.
Last year, two independent research groups designed crystals, known as two-dimensional antiferromagnets, whose electrons can collectively imitate the Higgs boson. By precisely studying this behavior, the researchers think they can better understand the physical laws that govern materials — and potentially discover new states of matter. It was the first time that researchers have been able to induce such “Higgs modes” in these materials. “You’re creating a little mini universe,” said David Alan Tennant, a physicist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory who led one of the groups along with Tao Hong, his colleague there.
To read more, click here.