Shape of Electrons

For the first time, researchers have measured the shape of an electron as it moves through a solid. This achievement could open a new way of looking at how electrons behave inside different materials.

Their discovery highlights many effects that could be relevant to everything from quantum information science to electronics manufacturing.

Those findings come from a team led by physicist Riccardo Comin, MIT’s Class of 1947 Career Development Associate Professor of Physics and leader of the work, in collaboration with other institutions.

“We’ve essentially developed a blueprint for obtaining some completely new information that couldn’t be obtained before,” says Comin. His colleague and co-author, Mingu Kang, performed much of this research at MIT before continuing at Cornell University.
New angles on electron shape

Physicists have examined electrons for decades, but the wave-like aspect of these particles brings extra complexity. Electrons can be described not just as small points, but also as “wave functions.”  READ MORE...

A New Type of Magnetism

ALL THE MAGNETS you have ever interacted with, such as the tchotchkes stuck to your refrigerator door, are magnetic for the same reason. But what if there were another, stranger way to make a material magnetic?

In 1966, the Japanese physicist Yosuke Nagaoka conceived of a type of magnetism produced by a seemingly unnatural dance of electrons within a hypothetical material. Now, a team of physicists has spotted a version of Nagaoka’s predictions playing out within an engineered material only six atoms thick.   READ MORE...