{"id":2967,"date":"2012-04-20T10:22:23","date_gmt":"2012-04-20T17:22:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cosmologyscience.com\/cosblog\/?p=2967"},"modified":"2025-12-10T02:18:57","modified_gmt":"2025-12-10T10:18:57","slug":"electron-is-not-a-fundamental-particle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cosmologyscience.com\/cosblog\/electron-is-not-a-fundamental-particle\/","title":{"rendered":"Electron No Longer a Fundamental Particle ?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Spin-Charge<\/a>

Spin-Charge Separation Graph
Credit: Nature, Schlappa et al<\/p><\/div>\n

Amazing news: Researchers in Switzerland have separated an Electron into two smaller quasi-particles – a “Spinon<\/a>” and an “Orbiton<\/a>;” meaning they have physically separated<\/span> the spin and the orbit properties of an Electron.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Until now, standard physics generally accepted that an Electron was a fundamental particle – that it was not made of smaller components.<\/p>\n

However, as early as 1980 theorists had predicted an electron could be made of three smaller pieces: A “Spinon” (providing spin), an “Orbiton” (providing the orbit) and a “Holon<\/a>” (carrying the charge).<\/p>\n

In 1996, physicists theorized that an electron might split into a holon and spinon.<\/a><\/p>\n

In 1996, American physicists C. L. Kane and Matthew Fisher made a theoretical prediction that if you confine electrons to individual atomic chains, the Wiedemann-Franz law could be strongly violated. In this one-dimensional world, the electrons split into two distinct components or excitations, one carrying spin but not charge (the spinon), the other carrying charge but not spin (the holon).<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This year Swiss and German researchers1<\/sup> led by experimenter Thorsten Schmitt fired a tightly focused X-ray beam at a copper-oxide compound called “strontium cuprate<\/strong>,” special because particles in it can only move in one-dimension, one degree of freedom<\/strong> – forward or backwards.<\/p>\n

They observed an electron split into two of the three predicted parts – a Spinon and an Orbitron.<\/p>\n

What solidified their observation is finding distinct properties for the two parts. “These <\/a>quasiparticles can move with different speeds and even in different directions in the material<\/a><\/strong>,” said Jeroen van den Brink, a condensed-matter physicist at the Institute for Theoretical Solid State Physics in Dresden, Germany.<\/p>\n

For more here is a news report in Nature Journal “Not-quite-so elementary, my dear electron<\/a>”<\/p>\n

The original paper: Spin\u2013orbital separation in the quasi-one-dimensional Mott insulator [strontium cuprate]<\/a><\/p>\n

1. Electron Splitting Research Team: J. Schlappa, K. Wohlfeld, K. J. Zhou, M. Mourigal, M. W. Haverkort, V. N. Strocov, L. Hozoi, C. Monney, S. Nishimoto, S. Singh, A. Revcolevschi, J.-S. Caux, L. Patthey, H. M. R\u00f8nnow, J. van den Brink & T. Schmitt<\/p>\n

Do I hear a Nobel Prize ringing ? :-)<\/p>\n

Update April 4, 2016: Experimentalists have just separated an Electron into smaller particles<\/a>, more easily and apparently sufficiently so that the Electron subcomponents can be used in human scale devices ! They refer to the result as a new state of matter called “quantum spin liquid<\/a>.” More later.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

______________________________________________<\/center>Related articles:<\/p>\n

“Why Don\u2019t Three Quarks Add Up to One Proton? (and its not even close)<\/a>”<\/p>\n

Haggar Physicists Develop ‘Quantum Slacks’<\/a><\/p>\n

And a book\u00a0(this website will get a few dimes if you buy it here.)
\n<\/a>\"\"es<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Amazing news: Researchers in Switzerland have separated an Electron into two smaller quasi-particles – a “Spinon” and an “Orbiton;” meaning they have physically separated the spin and the orbit properties of an Electron. Until now, standard physics generally accepted that … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":437,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[13,20],"tags":[139,140,144,136,142,141,143,135],"class_list":["post-2967","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-basic-science","category-particles","tag-electron","tag-fundamental-particle","tag-holon","tag-matthew-fisher","tag-orbitron","tag-spinon","tag-strontium-cuprate","tag-thorsten-schmitt"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cosmologyscience.com\/cosblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2967","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cosmologyscience.com\/cosblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cosmologyscience.com\/cosblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cosmologyscience.com\/cosblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cosmologyscience.com\/cosblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2967"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/cosmologyscience.com\/cosblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2967\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7699,"href":"https:\/\/cosmologyscience.com\/cosblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2967\/revisions\/7699"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cosmologyscience.com\/cosblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2967"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cosmologyscience.com\/cosblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2967"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cosmologyscience.com\/cosblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2967"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}