A team of researchers from Boston College has created a new metallic specimen where the motion of electrons flows in the same way water flows in a pipe—fundamentally changing from particle-like to fluid-like dynamics, the team reports in Nature Communications.
Working with colleagues from the University of Texas at Dallas and Florida State University, Boston College Assistant Professor of Physics Fazel Tafti found in the metal superconductor, a synthesis of Niobium and Germanium (NbGe2), that a strong interaction between electrons and phonons alters the transport of electrons from the diffusive, or particle-like, to hydrodynamic, or fluid-like, regime.
The findings mark the first discovery of an electron-phonon liquid inside NbGe2, Tafti said.
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