| For the first time, researchers have been able to record, frame-by-frame, how an electron interacts with certain atomic vibrations in a solid. The technique captures a process that commonly causes electrical resistance in materials while, in others, can cause the exact opposite–the absence of resistance, or superconductivity. | |
| “The way electrons interact with each other and their microscopic environment determines the properties of all solids,” said MengXing Na, a University of British Columbia (UBC) PhD student and co-lead author of the study, published in Science (“Direct determination of mode-projected electron-phonon coupling in the time domain”). “Once we identify the dominant microscopic interactions that define a material’s properties, we can find ways to ‘turn up’ or ‘down’ the interaction to elicit useful electronic properties.” |
| Controlling these interactions is important for the technological exploitation of quantum materials, including superconductors, which are used in MRI machines, high-speed magnetic levitation trains, and could one day revolutionize how energy is transported. | |
| At tiny scales, atoms in all solids vibrate constantly. Collisions between an electron and an atom can be seen as a ‘scattering’ event between the electron and the vibration, called a phonon. The scattering can cause the electron to change both its direction and its energy. Such electron-phonon interactions lie at the heart of many exotic phases of matter, where materials display unique properties. | |
| With the support of the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, the team at UBC’s Stewart Blusson Quantum Matter Institute (SBQMI) developed a new extreme-ultraviolet laser source to enable a technique called time-resolved photoemission spectroscopy for visualizing electron scattering processes at ultrafast timescales. |
Image Credit: UBC
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