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posted by LaminatorX on Monday March 03 2014, @06:00AM   Printer-friendly
from the (sigh)-still-no-Puerto-Ricoton dept.

amblivious writes:

"Researchers investigating the creation of biexcitons noticed an unexpected drop in energy when creating multiple biexcitons in gallium arsenide, leading to the discovery of a new state of matter; the dropleton. Excitons are quasi-particles created when a photon knocks an electron loose from a material, causing an electron hole. If the forces of other charges nearby keep the electron close enough to the hole a state known as an exciton forms where the combined electron and hole act together as though they are a single particle. Biexcitons consist of two of these quasi-particles and collectively behave like a molecule. In this discovery several excitons are behaving together in a 'quantum fog' and behave like a droplet, hence the name.

See the article in Nature for more information."

 
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  • (Score: 2) by kebes on Thursday March 06 2014, @09:22PM

    by kebes (1505) on Thursday March 06 2014, @09:22PM (#12371)
    Yup.

    There are various ways the excited electron can lose energy and drop back down to the ground-state, thereby eliminating both the negative and positive free charges (fluorescence being one way, thermalization being another, ...). In the meantime, that electron vacancy ('hole') moves around because the sea of non-excited electrons are moving around trying to fill the vacancy... but they can't fill it, just move it from place to place.
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