Condensed matter physicists from the University of Illinois have successfully summoned a demon, but probably not the one you’re picturing—think less fire and brimstone and more quantum mechanics trickery. The “demon,” in this case, actually stands for “distinct electron motion” with the physics favorite suffix “-on” added for good measure.
Theorized by physicist David Pines in 1956, this demon (also known as Pine’s Demon) is a plasmon—a discrete wave rippling through plasma electrons—that is massless and has a neutral charge. As you’d probably imagine, something that’s both massless and neutral isn’t exactly easy to detect.
But a paper published by scientists at the University of Illinois showcases how they stumbled upon this demon plasmon by accident. At first, the team was only analyzing the metal strontium ruthenate to figure out why it contained similar properties to high-temperature superconductors (around -130 degrees Celsius) without actually being one. Then, they spotted a quasiparticle that was too slow to be a surface plasmon but too fast to be an acoustic phonon.
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