‘Crazy’ light emitters: Physicists see an unusual quantum phenomenon

A highly unusual movement of light emitting particles in atomically-thin semiconductors was experimentally confirmed by scientists from the Würzburg–Dresden Cluster of Excellence ct.qmat–Complexity and Topology in Quantum Matter. Electronic quasiparticles, known as excitons, seemed to move in opposite directions at the same time. Professor Alexey Chernikov–newly appointed physicist at the Technische Universität Dresden–and his team were able to reveal the consequences of this quantum phenomenon by monitoring light emission from mobile excitons using ultrafast microscopy at extremely low temperatures. These findings move the topic of quantum transport of excitonic many-body states into the focus of modern research. The results of this work have been published in the Physical Review Letters journal.