2D ‘Supersolid’ That Flows Without Friction Has Been Made For The First Time

FIONA MACDONALD19 AUGUST 2021

In a significant achievement, physicists have produced a two-dimensional supersolid in the lab for the first time.

That may sound incredibly mind-bendy, but it’s a feat researchers have been working towards for more than 50 years. Supersolids are strange materials with atoms arranged in the ordered structure of a solid, yet they can flow without friction, just like a superfluid. 

Two years ago, physicists successfully created supersolids using ultra-cold magnetic atoms… but only in one-dimension. Now, a team of Austrian researchers has managed to create the crystal-like structure in 2D for the first time; the result will allow physicists to test and experiment with some of the weirdest materials-science phenomena out there.

“To picture a supersolid, consider an ice cube immersed in liquid water, with frictionless flow of the water through the cube,” writes physicist Bruno Laburthe-Tolra from the Laser Physics Laboratory in Paris, in a News & Views article published alongside the new paper in Nature today.

This strange duality means supersolids are referred to as a quantum mechanical state of matter.

That’s because, like with other quantum phenomena (think entanglement or Schrödinger’s cat), the particles in a supersolid state are both locked into a rigid solid structure, but also delocalized at the same time, which allows them to behave like a wave and flow freely without friction throughout the solid.

Supersolidity was first predicted in 1969, and has long been studied in superfluid helium, which was considered the best candidate to find evidence of a solid, crystal-like structure with the properties of a superfluid. However, despite decades of research, supersolidity in helium remains elusive…..more here 

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