Charge Fluctuation at a Quantum Critical Point.

This is a fascinating paper[1] (which I'll be reading more of in the next several weeks). But for now, I'll just highlight it here.

The authors found that charge fluctuation in a "strange metal" antiferromagnetic compound exhibit a scaling of f/T (frequency over temperature) in the optical conductivity, which often indicates the presence of a quantum critical point.

If anyone has done MBE before, you'll know how tedious and difficult it is to synthesize a material such as this, and have it be pristine enough to produce these effects that can be measured, at a THz level, no less!

There are many implications here, not the least of which is that the cuprate high-Tc superconductors share the same "parent" or undoped state, being antiferromagnetic perovskites themselves. There have been experiments indicating that the cuprates superconductors are also influenced by their proximity to a quantum critical point.

This is another example where some of the most fundamental aspects of quantum mechanics, in this case the concept of quantum criticality, can often be clearly manifested in a condensed matter system, not in elementary particle physics experiment.

Zz.

[1] L. Prochaska et al., "Singular charge fluctuations at a magnetic quantum critical point." Science v.367, p.285 (2020). ArXiv version of the paper can be found here.