First Map Made of a Solid’s Secret Quantum Geometry
1 min read
Summary
Quantum mechanics describes the bizarre behaviors of particles on tiny scales, such as the fact that they can be in multiple places at once.
Recently, physicists have developed a way to measure something called a quantum material’s “wave function,” or the shapes that the possible states of the material take.
They refer to a space where the material’s quantum states exist as a landscape with hills and valleys, with the hills corresponding to high probabilities and valleys to low probabilities of a state occurring.
Physicists can now begin to understand materials’ weird behaviors, such as sudden changes when nothing seems to have changed, by seeing how these landscapes change under different conditions.
For instance, black phosphorus exhibits exotic behaviors that might be explained by its hidden landscape.
Now that measuring quantum geometry is possible, physicists expect to see a lot more surprises.
