Under the right circumstances, electrons can be freed of the rat-race commutes and high-stress traffic deep within a conductor by skirting its boundar

Forget Superconductors: Electrons Living on The Edge Could Unlock Perfect Power

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2024-10-07 12:30:05

Under the right circumstances, electrons can be freed of the rat-race commutes and high-stress traffic deep within a conductor by skirting its boundaries. There, they can turn effortless circles in a one-way, resistance-free current.

While theory describes the basic principles behind this 'edge state' flow of electrons, understanding it well enough to develop applications that might exploit its benefits has proven challenging thanks to its small, fleeting behavior.

In a new study, researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) used a cloud of ultracold sodium atoms to stand in for electrons – achieving the similar edge state effect and physics, but on a scale and duration long enough to allow them to study it in detail.

According to what's known as the Hall effect, voltages arise when a magnetic field is positioned perpendicular to a current. There's a quantum version of this effect as well, where in a flat, 2D space, electrons move in circles relative to surrounding fields.

When that 2D surface is the edge of a chunk of a class of 'topological' material, electrons ought to accumulate in precise positions and move in a quantized fashion as predicted by quantum physics. As common as the phenomenon appears to be, linking properties of the materials with speed and direction of the flow is far from straight-forward. The actions last for mere femtoseconds (quadrillionths of seconds), which makes studying them properly practically impossible.