Excitons are quasiparticles that are formed in insulators or semiconductors when an electron is promoted to a higher energy band, leaving a positively charged hole behind.
General Physics
Using thermodynamic geometry to optimize microscopic finite-time heat engines
Stochastic thermodynamics is an emerging area of physics aimed at better understanding and interpreting thermodynamic concepts away from equilibrium. Over the past few years, findings in these fields have revolutionized the general understanding of different...
Study sets new constraints on dark photons using a new dielectric optical haloscope
Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the Perimeter Institute recently set new constraints on dark photons, which are hypothetical particles and renowned dark matter candidates. Their...
Study identifies a tidal disruption event that coincides with the production of a high-energy neutrino
High-energy neutrinos are highly fascinating subatomic particles produced when very fast charged particles collide with other particles or photons. IceCube, a renowned neutrino detector located at the South Pole, has been detecting extragalactic high-energy neutrinos...
The direct detection of a topological phase transition through a sign change in the Berry curvature dipole
The Berry curvature and Chern number are crucial topological qualities of a quantum mechanical origin characterizing the electron wave function of materials. These two elements play a very important role in determining the properties of specific materials.
A model that can predict the exact quasi-particle properties of heavy Fermi polarons
Physicists studying quantum many-body physics very rarely reach exact solutions or conclusions, particularly in more than one dimension. This is also true for the Fermi polaron problem, describing instances in which the many-body quantum background is a...
Chip-scale Floquet topological insulators to enhance 5G wireless communications
Floquet topological insulators are materials with topological phases that originate from tailored time-dependent perturbations of their crystal structure. These materials have been proved to feature highly unusual electron conduction properties. In recent years, there...
Astrophysicists simulate a fuzzy dark matter galactic halo
Dark matter is a type of matter in the universe that does not absorb, reflect or emit light, which makes it impossible to directly detect. In recent years, astrophysicists and cosmologists worldwide have been trying to indirectly detect this elusive type of matter, to...
Searching for cosmic-ray boosted sub-GeV dark matter using data from the PandaX-II experiment
Physicists worldwide are continuing their search for dark matter, an elusive type of matter that does not absorb, reflect or emit light and is believed to make up most of the matter in the universe. A type of dark matter that many teams have been specifically looking...
Using renormalization group methods to study how the brain processes information
Past neuroscience research suggests that biological neural networks in the brain could self-organize into a critical state. In physics, a critical state is essentially a point that marks the transition between ordered and disordered phases of matter.