Physicists excited by discovery of new form of matter, excitonium
IN BRIEF
Many decades ago, scientists theorized the possibility of strange material they called "excitonium." Now, thanks to innovative experimentation, researchers have proven its existence.
NEW MATTER
Researchers at the University of Illinois have announced an exciting finding — the discovery of a new form of matter: excitonium. This material is made up of a kind of boson, a composite particle that could allow the matter to act as a superfluid, superconductor, or even as an insulating electronic crystal.
Physics professor Peter Abbamonte and his team worked together with colleagues at Illinois, University of California, Berkeley, and University of Amsterdam to prove once-and-for-all the existence of this strange and mysterious type of matter that was theorized more than 50 years ago. They described how they detected excitonium in the journal Science.
Excitonium is a condensate made up of excitons, which are what you get when you combine escaped electrons and the “holes” they left. This quirky quantum-mechanical pairing is possible because, in semiconductors, electrons on the edge of one energy level in an atom are able, when excited, to jump into the next energy level, leaving behind a “hole” in the previous level. This hole acts like a positively charged particle, attracting the negatively charged electron that escaped.
https://physics.illinois.edu/news/article/24114