A tall glass of ice water isn't just a thirst quencher; it's also an everyday example of coexisting phases. Water's molecular makeup can exist simultaneously in both a liquid and solid phase. And as it turns out, this phase duality can exist in more exotic, quantum materials, and in ways that are far more complicated to tease apart. Their results, reported today in the journal Nature Physics, can help to explain how some materials host superconductivity, magnetism, and other electronic phases. Untangling such phases, and understanding how they emerge, will help engineers control electronic behavior and design high-performance quantum devices. 'People believe the cornerstone of replacing silicon lies in quantum materials that have multiple coexisting phases,' says co-author Alfred Zong PhD '20, who co-led the study as an MIT graduate student and is now an assistant professor at Stanford University. 'Our experiment provides a very neat way to study these multiple phases.' The team,...
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