Nothing lasts forever. Humans, planets, stars, galaxies… maybe even the Universe itself, everything perishes according to the cycle of birth – death. But that law is unlikely to exist in the quantum world because recently, scientists have discovered quasiparticles in many quantum systems that can literally be immortal.
The pseudoparticle is not a particle like the electrons or quarks we know. They are just a disturbance taking place inside matter, generated by electric or magnetic forces in solids and acting like particles. While a particle (electron, proton or neutron) can float freely in space, a pseudoparticle can only exist inside systems of interactions between many particles (mostly solids).
After decay, the pseudoparticle can reorganize itself to return to its previous state.
The pseudo-particles that are considered immortal still undergo decay, but the strange thing is that after decay, they can reorganize themselves to return to their old state.
This seems to be challenging the second law of thermodynamics, which states that entropy in an isolated system can only increase, not decrease : things can only be broken, not built on their own. rebuild. However, the discovery of immortal pseudo-particles does not cause headaches for scientists, because humanity still knows too little about the quantum world – which possesses laws that are contrary to our great physical model. which we still know.
We all know the strong interaction is the binding force between the quarks, the particles that make up the nucleus of an atom, this force holds the protons and neutrons in the nucleus together. With some heavy element nuclei, some of the neutrons isolated from the proton will cause the nucleus to decay. But in June 2019 physicist Frank Pollman of the Technical University of Munich made a strange discovery: “Previously, we assumed that pseudoparticles in quantum systems, the interaction decays after a few seconds. certain time, but now we know the opposite: strong interactions can even cause the nucleus to stop decaying completely.”
The scientists involved in the study developed numerical models to calculate the complex interactions of the quasiparticles, and then they ran simulations on a supercomputer to observe how they decay.
“After seeing the results of the simulation, we had to admit that the pseudoparticles did decay, but then appeared identical particle entities from the debris,” said physicist Ruben Verresen of the Technical University of Munich and the Max Planck Institute for Physics.
“If decay happens at a superfast rate, then an inverse reaction will occur after a certain amount of time and the debris will converge. This process can repeat endlessly creating a knife. prolonged motion between decay and regeneration”.
And finally, physicists have shown, it doesn’t violate the second law of thermodynamics. Since oscillation is a wave transformed into matter, this is described by the concept of wave-particle duality, a feature found in quantum mechanics. Besides, the entropy of quantum systems containing pseudo-particles does not decrease, they remain the same. Although this is very strange, it does not break the laws of physics.
Pseudo-particles have decay, but then identical particle entities emerge from the fragments.
In fact, the discovery solved a few other problems. In previous experiments, the magnetic compound Ba 3 CoSb 2 O 9 had an unstable structure, but now the magnetic pseudoparticles present in this substance ( named magnons ) are the missing link. to decipher this phenomenon. According to computer simulations, they rearranged themselves after decay.
In addition, physicists have also deciphered the phenomenon of helium becoming a superfluid at the absolute low temperature of -273.15°C, and this transition can be explained by the fact that helium is also filled with gas. pseudoparticles named rotons.
Currently, these discoveries are based on theory only, but the researchers believe that the immortality of pseudo-particles holds the potential for long-term data storage in quantum computer systems.
The study was published in the journal Nature.