A groundbreaking discovery has been made by a group of scientists who have found new particles that could potentially unlock the mystery behind one of the most enigmatic forces in the Universe – gravity. The study, which was published in Nature, provides experimental evidence for the existence of chiral graviton mods (CGM) in semiconductor materials.
These CGM particles share similarities with gravitons, the hypothetical elementary particles responsible for gravity. This discovery presents a unique opportunity for scientists to study particles that closely resemble gravitons in a laboratory setting, potentially leading to the unification of quantum mechanics and Einstein’s theory of relativity.
The research team behind the study highlighted that this experiment is the first of its kind to confirm the concept of gravitons since their proposal in the 1930s, specifically in the context of quantum gravity within a condensed state system.
The discovery was made in a particular state of matter known as a liquid with a fractional quantum Hall effect (FQH), where strongly interacting electrons are found in a two-dimensional space under high magnetic fields and low temperatures. These electrons are subject to a quantum metric that could give rise to CGM in response to light.
Utilizing a developed technique, scientists were able to observe the interaction of specially polarized light with particles that exhibit behavior similar to CGM. The observed physical properties of CGM, including their spin-2 nature, energy gaps between main and excited states, and dependence on filling factors, align with predictions based on quantum geometry.
This groundbreaking discovery not only validates the existence of CGM but also has the potential to bridge the gap between high-energy physics, which explores the largest scales of the Universe, and condensed matter physics, which delves into the unique properties of materials at the atomic level.
Future plans for the researchers involve utilizing these methods to further study liquid with a fractional quantum Hall effect at higher energy levels and in other quantum systems where quantum geometry predicts the presence of collective particles with unique properties, such as superconductors.