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Condensed-matter physics

Attractive electrons from nanoengineering

Nature volume 535, pages 362–363 (2016)Cite this article

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Electrons repel each other because they are negatively charged. An experiment now confirms a fifty-year-old theory that electrons can also attract one another as a result of repulsion from other electrons. See Letter p.395

Coulomb's law describes the force that exists between two charged particles, such as the mutual repulsion of negatively charged electrons, and has been confirmed by a multitude of experiments. However, electrons in matter can also attract each other. On page 395, Hamo et al.1 demonstrate an attraction mechanism that is purely electronic. They prove that the repulsion of electrons in solids can be turned into an attraction with the help of other electrons, validating a long-standing theory proposed by the physicist William Little2.

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Figure 1: The excitonic mechanism for attractive electrons.

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References

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  1. Takis Kontos is at the Laboratoire Pierre Aigrain, Ecole Normale Supérieure, 75231 Paris, France.,

    Takis Kontos

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  1. Takis Kontos
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Correspondence to Takis Kontos.

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Kontos, T. Attractive electrons from nanoengineering. Nature 535, 362–363 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/535362a

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