Scientists find ‘strange metal’ that behaves in ways they don’t understand | The Independent

LOGIN
Login

Tech

Scientists find ‘strange metal’ that behaves in ways

they don’t understand
Andrew Griffin

·2022
· 16:02
12 January
Wednesday
Comments

(Independent)

https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/strange-metal-electrons-discovery-breakthrough-b1991658.html[12-Jan-22 19:46:43]
Scientists find ‘strange metal’ that behaves in ways they don’t understand | The Independent

Scientists have found a new “strange metal” that behaves in ways they can’t quite
understand.

But the discovery could be key to finding out an explanation for a phenomenon
that has troubles researchers for decades.

Most materials, such as copper and silver, behave in predictable and well
understood ways, and scientists understand how their electrical conductance
changes when they are heated or cooled.

https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/strange-metal-electrons-discovery-breakthrough-b1991658.html[12-Jan-22 19:46:43]
Scientists find ‘strange metal’ that behaves in ways they don’t understand | The Independent

But recently scientists have been focused on another class of materials, known as
strange metals. They do not seem to behave according to the usual electrical rules.
Scientists are doubly intrigued because they are thought to offer hints of the
quantum world, as well as a way of understanding other phenomena that is yet to
be fully explained.

Now scientists have found another strange metal behaviour and another mystery to
be solved. In the material, electrical charge is not carried by electrons, as usual, but
by so-called Cooper pairs that are more like waves.

Recommended

Earth is surrounded by a ‘bubble’ producing vast amounts of stars

Scientists discover ‘mini’ black hole hiding in tiny galaxy

Kim Kardashian sued over crypto that crashed 98% after she promoted it

Electrons are part of a class of particles called fermions, and Cooper pairs are
bosons that behave very differently. Strange metal behaviour has never been seen
in a system with bosons.

That could finally help solve the decades-long mystery of why this strange metal
behaviour actually happens.

“We have these two fundamentally different types of particles whose behaviors
converge around a mystery,” said Jim Valles, a professor of physics at Brown and
an author on the new study. “What this says is that any theory to explain strange
metal behavior can’t be specific to either type of particle. It needs to be more

https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/strange-metal-electrons-discovery-breakthrough-b1991658.html[12-Jan-22 19:46:43]
Scientists find ‘strange metal’ that behaves in ways they don’t understand | The Independent

fundamental than that.”

The research, ‘Signatures of a strange metal in a bosonic system’, is published in

Nature today.

Strange metal behaviour has been puzzling scientists for 30 years, since a class of
materials called cuprates was discovered not to act like other metals. When normal
metals are heated, their resistance goes up, until a certain point when high
temperatures mean the resistance becomes constant – but in curates, that doesn’t
happen, and the strange metals refuse to obey the expected rules.

Researchers don’t know why that might happen. But they do know that it appears
to be linked with two different constants: one that relates to the energy produced by
thermal motion, and Planck’s constant, which relates to the energy of a particle of
light.

“To try to understand what’s happening in these strange metals, people have
applied mathematical approaches similar to those used to understand black holes,”
Valles said. “So there’s some very fundamental physics happening in these
materials.”

To better understand why it was happening, scientists used a cuprate material that
had tiny holes in it to produce the Cooper pairs. They cooled it down and watched
how its conductance changes – and found that it was behaving like fermionic
strange metals.

Recommended

Earth is surrounded by a ‘bubble’ producing vast amounts of stars

Scientists discover ‘mini’ black hole hiding in tiny galaxy

Kim Kardashian sued over crypto that crashed 98% after she promoted it

https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/strange-metal-electrons-discovery-breakthrough-b1991658.html[12-Jan-22 19:46:43]
Scientists find ‘strange metal’ that behaves in ways they don’t understand | The Independent

That doesn’t explain where the strange behaviour is coming from. But it does give
a new piece of information for them to try and understand it better.

“It’s been a challenge for theoreticians to come up with an explanation for what we
see in strange metals,” Valles said. “Our work shows that if you’re going to model
charge transport in strange metals, that model must apply to both fermions and
bosons — even though these types of particles follow fundamentally different
rules.”

More about: Metal

https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/strange-metal-electrons-discovery-breakthrough-b1991658.html[12-Jan-22 19:46:43]