Physicists in Germany and the US have discovered a new "exotic" subatomic particle, which they have called a "quantum droplet" (or dropleton).
The researchers, led by Steven Cadiff of the JILA Institute (a joint research center of the University of Colorado and the US National Institute of Standards & Technology) and Makilo Kira of the University of Marburg, who published the relevant publication in the journal “Nature”, according to Reuters and “New Scientist”, announced that the particle behaves a bit like a liquid drop (hence its name).
In fact, the quantum droplet constitutes a quasi-particle, as it is an amalgam of smaller particles, five electrons and five “holes” (“hole” is a location where an electron could be detected, but it is not there – strangely enough, the “hole” is considered a type of particle).
The discovery may in the future be useful in nanotechnology, e.g. in LED lighting or in the design of new optoelectronic devices, such as semiconductor lasers used in blu-ray players and telecommunications.
The tiny "drop" made a fleeting appearance in the researchers' experiments (emission of a very fast laser of 100 million pulses per second onto a gallium arsenide semiconductor), as it appeared for just 25 trillionths of a second, but enough for physicists to conduct further research on the interaction of light and matter.
In recent years, scientists have discovered various quasiparticles, which have been given exotic names (levitons, orbitons, excitons, wrinkletons, etc.). To this ever-expanding list, the quantum droplet (or dropleton) is added. Each of these particles is made up of individual particles, but behaves within a solid material (such as a semiconductor) as if it were a single fundamental subatomic particle.
Link: For the original scientific paper (with subscription) at the address:
https://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v506/n7489/full/nature12994.html
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