Excitonium, a strange form of matter that was first theorized almost 50 years ago, has now been discovered by researchers.
What is excitonium? It is a rather exotic condensate that exhibits macroscopic quantum phenomena like a superconductor or a superfluid. It consists of excitons, particles formed from an unlikely pairing of an escaped electron and the hole it leaves behind. The hole actually behaves like a positively-charged particle itself.
It attracts an electron and together they form the composite particle known as the exciton.In their experiments on non-doped crystals of the transition metal dichalcogenide titanium diselenide (1T-TiSe2), the researchers were able to observe the material and its precursor soft plasmon phase, called “the smoking gun” that proves excitonium’s existence. The precursor phase emerges as the material approaches its critical temperature.
The scientists reproduced their results 5 times on different cleaved crystals during the testing, adding more confidence to the study.
What they achieved in particular is developing a new technique called momentum-resolved electron energy-loss spectroscopy (M-EELS) that is sensitive enough to distinguish…
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