Some of history’s biggest discoveries initially appear to serve no practical purpose. When scientists devised the first working lasers a few decades after Albert Einstein’s theory of stimulated emission in 1917, few understood what practical applications they might have. Now, of course, most of the technological world relies on them.
And it doesn’t stop at lasers. Lu Li from the University of Michigan has spent years exploring a strange quantum behavior in the insulator known as ytterbium boride (YbB12), which is also known as a “Kondo insulator.” In 2018, Li and his team published a paper in Science detailing a strange phenomenon regarding YbB12. While its surface acts as a conductor, its bulk (or interior) acts as an insulator—but the team found evidence of quantum oscillations in the material’s bulk, aligning with previous research conducted by scientists at the University of Cambridge years earlier.
“This result confirms that Kondo insulators have a dual nature—they are both electrical insulators and itinerant metals,” Li told Physics World at the time. “This duality is a surprising consequence of the strong correlations between the electrons in the material.”
Fast forward seven years later, and Li and his team have gathered even more evidence of this striking quantum behavior in a study published in the journal Physical Review Letters. Working at the most powerful magnet lab in the world—the National Magnetic Field Laboratory in Tallahassee, Florida—Li aimed to confirm that these oscillations did indeed form within the bulk of the insulator and that they were intrinsic to the material.
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