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Quantum-matter physics

Quasiparticles on a collision course

Nature volume 533, pages 186–187 (2016)Cite this article

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Emergent quanta of momentum and charge, called quasiparticles, govern many of the properties of materials. The development of a quasiparticle collider promises to reveal fundamental insights into these peculiar entities. See Letter p.225

The authors studied an electrical insulator, tungsten diselenide (WSe2). They generated pairs of quasiparticles in the material, one negatively charged and the other positively charged, using an ultrashort light pulse (10–100 femtoseconds in duration; 1 fs is 10−15 seconds). The light pulse's energy, intensity and duration were precisely adjusted so that the initial distance of the quasiparticles from each other, and their relative speeds, were well defined.

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Figure 1: An emergent quasiparticle.

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  1. Dirk van der Marel is in the Department of Quantum Matter Physics, University of Geneva, CH-1211 Geneva 4, Switzerland.,

    Dirk van der Marel

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  1. Dirk van der Marel
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Correspondence to Dirk van der Marel.

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van der Marel, D. Quasiparticles on a collision course. Nature 533, 186–187 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/533186a

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