What’s Mottness?

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Mottness is a quality that enhances antiferromagnetism and is studied in condensed matter physics for Mott insulators (MI). MI are unique states of matter that act as insulators due to electron-electron interactions. Research into mottness has potential applications in fields such as high temperature superconductors and quantum computing. MI can be created by directing three intersecting laser beams in a superfluid Bose-Einstein condensate.

Mottness is an overall insulating quality that improves antiferromagnetism and is studied in condensed matter physics for Mott insulators (MI). MIs are named after Sir Nevill Francis Mott, a 20th-century English physicist who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 20. Mott insulators are a unique state of samples of usually supercooled matter studied as superconductors which, in band theory gap, should exhibit metallic characteristics, but, due to electron-electron interactions, actually act as insulators. As a quality that enhances antiferromagentism, mottness is a general term that includes all previously unknown physical properties that enhance the antiferromagnetic state. These properties can include physical observations such as a change in the Green’s function in the many-body theory and two changes in the sign of the Hall coefficient for voltage differences across a conductor.

The study of mottness and the Mott insulator are of increasing interest in physics research since 2011 for their application in fields such as high temperature superconductors. Traditionally, mottness has been studied by cooling a gas such as rubidium to a state near that of absolute zero and confining the gas both optically and magnetically. This state of matter is known as a Bose-Einstein condensate, and it possesses unique qualities such as the ability to slow light to near-stop when photons pass through it. The confined individual particles are known as bosons, but further research since 2008 indicates that a Mott insulator can also be used to trap fermions and lead to a more complex optical lattice that supports high-temperature superconductivity.

The optical grating exhibiting Mott insulator characteristics is created by directing three intersecting laser beams in the Bose-Einstein condensate as a superfluid (SF). The quantum state of the material can then be tuned to have individual transition regions of SF to MI qualities by adjusting the power of the lasers or the characteristic density of the condensate itself. Such physics research into mottness has the potential to create a range of quantum states in matter from SF to MI that can emit light pulses on command. In theory, such research will eventually pave the way for the creation of optical quantum computer microprocessors that would be hundreds of millions of times faster than current microprocessors. The microprocessor itself would be built on subatomic-level quantum logic gates, making them many orders of magnitude smaller than the smallest transistors that exist in computer chips as of 2011.




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