Skip to main content

Half Ice, Half Fire: A Bizarre New State of Matter That Could Reshape Physics




In a groundbreaking study, scientists at Brookhaven National Lab uncovered a new phase of matter dubbed “half ice, half fire” a bizarre mix of cold, orderly electron spins and hot, chaotic ones.

This discovery flips the script on previously accepted limits in physics and could spark advances in quantum computing, magnetic refrigeration, and more. It stems from a decade-long journey through strange magnetic materials and offers a brand-new way to manipulate matter with ultrasharp precision.

A New State of Matter Emerges

Two physicists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory have discovered a new phase of matter while exploring a model of a magnetic material.

This newly identified phase is a unique arrangement of electron spins, the tiny magnetic moments of electrons that point either “up” or “down.” The phase features a mix of highly ordered (“cold”) and highly disordered (“hot”) spins. Because of this unusual combination, the researchers named it “half ice, half fire.” The discovery emerged from studying a one-dimensional model of a magnetic material known as a ferrimagnet.

Practical Potential for Energy and Information Tech

What makes “half ice, half fire” especially significant is its ability to cause extremely sharp transitions between different states of matter at a practical, finite temperature something that could have future applications in energy systems and information technology.

The findings, by physicists Weiguo Yin and Alexei Tsvelik, are detailed in the December 31, 2024 issue of Physical Review Letters.

“Finding new states with exotic physical properties  and being able to understand and control the transitions between those states  are central problems in the fields of condensed matter physics and materials science,” said Yin. “Solving those problems could lead to great advances in technologies like quantum computing and spintronics.”

Added Tsvelik, “We suggest that our findings may open a new door to understanding and controlling phases and phase transitions in certain materials.”

A Twin Phase and a Decade of Discovery

The “half-ice, half-fire” phase is the twin state of the “half-fire, half-ice” phase discovered by Yin, Tsvelik, and Christopher Roth, their 2015 undergraduate summer intern who is now a postdoc at the Flatiron Institute. They describe the discovery in a paper published in early 2024.

But the full story goes back to 2012, when Yin and Tsvelik were part of a multi-institutional collaboration, led by Brookhaven physicist John Hill, that was studying Sr3CuIrO6, a magnetic compound of strontium, copper, iridium, and oxygen. This research led to two papers, an experiment-driven study in 2012 and a theory-driven study in 2013, both published in PRL.

Yin and Tsvelik continued to look into the phase behaviors of Sr3CuIrO6 and, in 2016, found the “half-fire, half-ice” phase. In this state, which is induced by a critical external magnetic field, the “hot” spins on the copper sites are fully disordered on the atomic lattice and have smaller magnetic moments, while the “cold” spins on the iridium sites are fully ordered and have larger magnetic moments.

“But despite our extensive research, we still didn’t know how this state could be utilized, especially because it has been well known for one century that the one-dimensional Ising model, an established mathematical model of ferromagnetism that produces the half-fire, half-ice state, does not host a finite-temperature phase transition,” said Tsvelik. “We were missing pieces of the puzzle.”

Cracking the Code: Forbidden Transitions

A hint to the missing pieces was recently identified by Yin. In two publications for systems with and without an external magnetic field, respectively, he demonstrated that the aforementioned forbidden phase transition can be approached by ultranarrow phase crossover at fixed finite temperature.

In this current work, Yin and Tsvelik have discovered that “half fire, half ice” has an opposite, hidden state in which the hot and cold spins switch positions. That is, the hot spins become cold, and the cold spins become hot, which led them to name the phase “half ice, half fire.”

Website: International Research Awards on High Energy Physics and Computational Science.


#HighEnergyPhysics#ParticlePhysics#QuantumPhysics#AstroparticlePhysics#ColliderPhysics#HiggsBoson#LHC#QuantumFieldTheory#NeutrinoPhysics#PhysicsResearch#ComputationalScience#DataScience#ScientificComputing#NumericalMethods#HighPerformanceComputing#MachineLearningInScience#BigData#AlgorithmDevelopment#SimulationScience#ParallelComputing

Visit Our Website : hep-conferences.sciencefather.com
Nomination Link :hep-conferences.sciencefather.com/award-nomination/?ecategory=Awards&rcategory=Awardee
Registration Link : hep-conferences.sciencefather.com/award-registration/
Member Link : hep-conferences.sciencefather.com/conference-membership/?ecategory=Membership&rcategory=Member
Awards-Winners : hep-conferences.sciencefather.com/awards-winners/
For Enquiries: physicsqueries@sciencefather.com

Get Connected Here:
==================
Social Media Link
Twitter : x.com/Psciencefather
Pinterest : in.pinterest.com/physicsresearchorganisation
Blog : physicscience23.blogspot.com
Instagram : www.instagram.com/victoriaanisa1
YouTube :www.youtube.com/channel/UCzqmZ9z40uRjiPSr9XdEwMA
Tumblr : www.tumblr.com/blog/victoriaanisa

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Physicists observe a new form of magnetism for the first time

MIT physicists have demonstrated a new form of magnetism that could one day be harnessed to build faster, denser, and less power-hungry " spintronic " memory chips. The new magnetic state is a mash-up of two main forms of magnetism: the ferromagnetism of everyday fridge magnets and compass needles, and antiferromagnetism, in which materials have magnetic properties at the microscale yet are not macroscopically magnetized. Now, the MIT team has demonstrated a new form of magnetism , termed "p-wave magnetism." Physicists have long observed that electrons of atoms in regular ferromagnets share the same orientation of "spin," like so many tiny compasses pointing in the same direction. This spin alignment generates a magnetic field, which gives a ferromagnet its inherent magnetism. Electrons belonging to magnetic atoms in an antiferromagnet also have spin, although these spins alternate, with electrons orbiting neighboring atoms aligning their spins antiparalle...

new research in qauntum physics

         VISIT:https: //hep-conferences.sciencefather.com/          N ew research in  qauntum physics.                                                    Alphabet Has a Second, Secretive Quantum Computing Team Recent research in quantum physics includes the development of quantum computers, which are expected to be much more powerful than conventional computers and could revolutionize many aspects of technology, such as artificial intelligence and cryptography. Other research includes the development of quantum sensors for a variety of applications, including medical diagnostics, and the study of quantum entanglement and its potential to enable quantum computing and secure communication. Additionally, research is being conducted into the applications of quantum mechanics in materials science, such as unde...

Freezing light? Italian scientists froze fastest thing in universe, here’s how

In a rare occurrence, physics made it possible to control the fastest travelling element - light. Italian scientists have managed to freeze the light, as per reports. A recent study published in a British weekly journal reportedly revealed that light can exhibit ‘ supersolid behavior ’ a unique state of matter that flows without friction while retaining a solid-like structure. The research, led by Antonio Gianfate from CNR Nanotec and Davide Nigro from the University of Pavia, marks a significant step in understanding supersolidity in light. The scientists described their findings as “just the beginning” of this exploration, as per reports. In what can be termed as ‘manipulating photons under controlled quantum conditions ’, the scientists demonstrated that light, too, can exhibit this behaviour. (A photon is a bundle of electromagnetic energy which is massless, and travel at the speed of light) How did scientists freeze light? As we know, freezing involves lowering a liquid’s tempera...