Forums / Discussion / Serious Debate

Source
(Or just google quantum spin liquid news.)
I wish I could say I understand what this means, but it's a bit over my head. There's a lot of words I vaugely remember, like graphene, fermions, intrinsic angular momentum, etc. but time has taken its toll on my memory and this was a little above what I learned, with concepts I never learned, such as quasiparticles.
If anyone would be kind enough to decode this at all, even just a little, that would be much appreciated.
For example, is this really a new state of matter, and if so, just in a technical sense, or the conventional definition? And is quantum matter like idividual particles like protons and leptons and such, or something else? And does this have to do with those numbers that determine electron orbital distributions or whatnot, like magnetic moment and the n and l and other numbers?
Like I said, time has taken its toll. Thanks in advance!

Wow, this is a bit confusing. Lets see if I can explain it with what I know and some help from the internet…

Graphene is a material often referred to as two dimensional, due to being only one atom thick. They observed evidence that quantum spin liquid exists on a substance similar to it.

Quasiparticles refer to ways certain substances act – where they act like they are made up of smaller particles, but aren't. They are one particle, but they act like several. Thus, we say they are made up of "quasiparticles".

This does seem to be a new state of matter, in a way. Basically, the electrons seem almost like they're being… spread apart, I guess, into its quasiparticles. Because of this, it sort of kind of resembles a liquid when it comes to electrons. Like, I'm guessing if we were to make a model of it, like they did for solids, liquids, and gases in school, the atomic nuclei would be normal, but the atoms would just be a sort of floating substance around the nuclei, like a gas, or a liquid.

I could go with a paragraph by paragraph breakdown if someone wants, but I'm already not sure if my interpretation of this is accurate.

I think this about sums it up.

I don't know what any of this means, but Quantum Spin Liquid sounds like a DJ about to drop some heavy beats.