Physicists Create First Quasiparticle Bose-Einstein Condensate The Mysterious Fifth State of Matter

Physicists have created the first Bose-Einstein condensate — the mysterious “fifth state” of matter — made from quasiparticles. These are entities that do not count as elementary particles, although they can still have elementary-particle properties such as charge and spin.

The creation of a quasiparticle BEC is a huge deal, because it could help us to understand and model the behavior of electrons in solid-state materials. The research is published in Nature. The BEC, first created from atoms in 1995, is a strange state of matter. A BEC is a group of particles that all behave as one — they are all in the same quantum state and possess the same properties. Physicists have been able to create BECs out of atoms and ions, but this is the first time they have done so with electrons. The creation of a quasiparticle BEC is a huge deal, because it could help us to understand and model the behavior of electrons in solid-state materials. For example, when we talk about the electrical conduction of a metal, what we mean is that electrons are free to move through the solid material. When you apply a voltage to two wires connected by a piece of metal, electrons will flow from one wire to another.