For The First Time, a New State of Matter Has Been Observed in a Thread of Quantum Gas - ScienceAlert

Physicists have observed a new state of matter at work inside an elusive thread of quantum gas.What's more, they've identified a new state of matter at work that has only ever been seen once before - and never in quantum gas before now.Under ideal conditions, attraction between the particles within this drawn-out thread of quantum gas could keep it in line even under duress.Probing the mechanics of the process, the team soon noticed the hallmarks of a rather elusive phenomenon called quantum many-body scarring.This weird state of matter sits somewhere between quantum chaos and the predictability of old-fashioned classical physics, and describes a world that seems counterintuitive at first glance.A quarter of a century ago, it was discovered that in the buzz of a quantum system – where particles are everywhere and nowhere at once and individual atoms lose their sense of self – it's possible for predictable states to emerge.So finding signs of the state in a cooled string of dysprosium atoms has the potential to reveal a great deal about how bodies in a quantum system share energy.