A new study finds that "quantum critical points" in exotic electronic materials can act much like polarizing "hot button issues" in an election. Reporting in Nature, researchers from Rice University, two Max Planck Institutes in Dresden, Germany, and UCLA find that on either side of a quantum critical point, electrons fall into line and behave as traditionally expected, but at the critical point itself, traditional physical laws break down.
"The beauty of the quantum critical point is that even though it's only one point along the zero temperature axis, what happens at that point dictates how electrons will interact in the material under a broad set of physical conditions," said study co-author Qimiao Si, a theoretical physicist at Rice University. The new study involved "heavy-fermion metals," magnetic materials with many similarities to high-temperature superconductors.
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