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SCIENTISTS have discovered Weyl fermions, a massless particle that could lead to faster and more efficient electronics.
Weyl fermions were theorised by mathematician and physicist Hermann Weyl in 1929. They are able to behave as both matter and anti-matter inside a crystal. Fermions are more basic particles than the electrons, making them a possible candidate as building blocks of other subatomic particles.
According to the international team led by Princeton University scientists, the basic nature of Weyl fermions could provide a much more stable and efficient transport of particles than electrons. Unlike electrons, Weyl fermions are massless and possess a high degree of mobility.
This could allow for a nearly free and efficient flow of electricity in electronics, and thus greater power, especially for computers, the researchers suggest.
The researchers also found that the Weyl fermion can be reproduced. The scientists found the Weyl fermion inside a synthetic metallic crystal called tantalum arsenide that the Princeton researchers designed in collaboration with researchers at the Collaborative Innovation Center of Quantum Matter in Beijing and at National Taiwan University.
Weyl fermions can also behave like a composite of monopole- and antimonopole-like particles when inside a crystal. This means that Weyl particles that have opposite magnetic-like charges can nonetheless move independently of one another with a high degree of mobility.
These articles can be used to create massless electrons that move very quickly with no backscattering, wherein electrons are lost when they collide with an obstruction. In electronics, backscattering hinders efficiency and generates heat. Weyl electrons simply move through and around roadblocks, behaving like unidirectional light beams. This allows their use in new types of quantum computing.
To detect the fermions, the scientists loaded the tantalum arsenide crystals into a scanning tunneling spectromicroscope, to determine if the individual crystals matched the theoretical specifications for hosting a Weyl fermion.
The crystals that passed the test were then further tested with high-energy accelerator-based photon beams at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California. Once fired through the rystal, the beams' shape, size and direction indicated the presence of the long-elusive Weyl fermion.