Physicists in Germany and the United States have discovered a new "exotic" subatomic particle, called "quantum drop" (or dropleton).
The researchers, led by Steven Kadif of the JILA Institute (Joint Research Center of the University of Colorado and the US National Institute of Standards & Technology) and Makilo Kira of the University of Marburg, Reuters and New Scientist reported that the particle behaved a bit like a liquid drop (hence its name).
In fact, the quantum drop is a quasi-particle, as it is an amalgam of smaller particles, five electrons and five "holes" ("hole" is a place where an electron could be detected, but it is not there - strangely the "hole" considered a kind of particle).
Η discovery may be useful in the future in nanotechnology, e.g. in LED lighting or in the design of new optoelectronic devices such as semiconductor lasers used in blu-rays players and in telecommunications.
The tiny "drop" made a passing pass in the researchers' experiments (very fast laser emission of 100 million pulses per second on a gallium-arsenide semiconductor), as it appeared for only 25 trillionths of a second, but enough for the natural to on the interaction of light and matter.
In recent years, scientists have discovered various quasi-particles, which have given them exotic names (levitons, orbitons, excitons, rhytids, etc.). To this ever-expanding list comes the quantum drop (or dropleton). Each of these particles is composed of individual particles, but behaves within a solid material (like the semiconductor) as if it were a single fundamental subatomic particle.
Link: For original scientific work (subscription) at:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v506/n7489/full/nature12994.html
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