Gasoline power plants, vehicle combustion engines, and spacecraft jets convert heat energy from a burning fluid into mechanical energy. The efficiency of this process lies between around 15 and 50%, depending on the fluid and the engine type, making it a relatively poor energy-conversion mechanism. Predictions indicate that switching the heat-generation process with one that involves a solid-state material could increase energy-conversion efficiency by 10%. Now, experiments designed to detect the ferron, a previously only theorized quasiparticle, may have found such a material [1].
The ferron is thought to carry polarization. As such, it is akin to the magnon, the quasiparticle that propagates spin currents in magnetic systems, and, like their magnetic cousin, the ferron is predicted to carry heat. But prior to these new experiments, the ferron had yet to be experimentally observed.
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