feature

The quasiparticle zoo

Quasiparticles are an extremely useful concept that provides a more intuitive understanding of complex
phenomena in many-body physics. As such, they appear in various contexts, linking ideas across different fields
and supplying a common language.

LANDAU QUASIPARTICLES Even stranger quasiparticles showed

A concept emerges up in the early 1980s, with the discovery
One of the biggest surprises for of the fractional quantum Hall effect.
experimental physicists of the early Robert Laughlin proposed that the
twentieth century was the discovery of the elementary quasiparticle excitations
superfluid behaviour of liquid helium. And involved carry just a fraction of an electron
Moscow-based Pyotr Kapitza knew just the charge — as if, remarkably, electrons are
right theorist to explain it: Lev Landau1. split up. Electronic transport measurements
It was unfortunate then that the brilliant in 1997 detected quasiparticles carrying
and outspoken Landau had got himself only a third of an electron charge and
imprisoned by the KGB in 1938, the thereby proved — quite spectacularly —
same year that superfluidity was publicly that Laughlin’s quasiparticles were more
announced. Undeterred, Kapitza wrote than just mathematical entities.
to Landau’s captors and miraculously Laughlin noted in his Nobel Prize
managed to persuade them that it would be lecture3 that both superfluidity and the
a great loss to Soviet science if Landau was fractional quantum Hall effect are examples
left to perish in prison. He was promptly of emergent phenomena, which can only
released, with Kapitza appointed as his be understood by considering the system Calculated (top) and measured (bottom)
guarantor, and set to work without delay. as a whole and are impossible to derive dynamical structure factors for tin selenide, a
Sure enough, two years later he published from microscopic principles. But one of highly thermoelectric material. Reproduced from
a paper on helium superfluidity that, along the things an emergent phenomenon can ref. 30, NPG.
the way, boldly introduced the notion do, Laughlin wrote, is create new particles.
of quasiparticles. Landau’s discovery of quasiparticle
Landau’s quasiparticles were elementary excitations put this concept in the tangible wavevector and a frequency that depend
excitations of collections of particles. He context of condensed-matter physics.  ❐ on each other. This relation can be probed
suggested that these excitations could be by means of inelastic neutron scattering,
treated as if they were particles themselves, Liesbeth Venema is Senior Editor at Nature. via a quantity known as the dynamic
with genuine properties such as mass structure factor (pictured).
and momentum. Landau divided the PHONONS And as with electronic band structures,
quasiparticle elementary excitations of Solid vibes phonon band gaps can arise, representing
superfluid helium into two categories: Atoms in a crystal don’t sit still — they forbidden phonon frequencies. These gaps
phonons, which were already known; and vibrate around equilibrium positions. can be engineered to control heat transport,
a new entity called rotons, which had an Their collective motion produces so this is an effect exploited in phononic
unusual (quadratic) relation between energy displacement waves, and it is these dynamics metamaterials — materials with engineered
and momentum. A full description of that enable sound and heat to propagate periodic arrangements of components
superfluidity eventually required a fusion of through solids. Igor Tamm introduced leading to tunable phonon band structures.
Landau’s ideas and those of other theorists, the concept of ‘elastic quanta’ in the early Unlike electrons, however, phonons
but Landau’s particle-like description of 1930s to describe the vibrations quantum are bosons, so they can condense into a
elementary excitations turned out to be a mechanically in analogy to light quanta, or single collective vibration — a phononic
convenient way to approach many emergent photons, the elementary particles associated Bose–Einstein condensate.
condensed-matter problems. with electromagnetic waves. Soon after, Not long after the idea of phonons
In the 1950s, Landau himself developed Yakov Frenkel coined the term ‘phonon’ for emerged, Lev Landau considered their
a Fermi liquid theory to describe systems such quantized lattice vibrations4. interaction with electrons5. This interaction,
of many interacting particles. A typical There are two types of phonons: acoustic usually referred to as electron–phonon
Fermi liquid is a metal, in which mobile phonons, where atoms move coherently out coupling, can be understood in terms
electrons are continuously disturbed by of their equilibrium positions; and optical of a new type of quasiparticle known
Coulomb interactions with other electrons2. phonons, where atoms move out-of-phase as a polaron — a term attributed to
The quasiparticles emerging in such with each other. Because they behave like Solomon Pekar 4. A polaron is best thought
a system are electrons ‘dressed’ by the particles, the description of phonons bears of as an electron plus a lattice deformation,
collective interactions, which gives them similarities to electrons: just as an electron which increases the electron’s effective
a slightly different effective mass than in a solid is characterized by a wavevector mass — in quasiparticle language, phonons
free electrons (see ‘Relativistic fermions: and an energy given by a dispersion ‘dress’ the electron. Polarons can be
Beyond convention’). relation, phonons are characterized by a generalized to describe any interaction

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that leads to electrons being coupled to a Tom Kibble, all explaining how massive
lattice distortion, and they are thought to particles could appear as a result of
play important roles in various phenomena, spontaneous breaking of gauge symmetry.
including charge transport in organic This is now known in particle physics as the
materials and high-Tc superconductivity. ❐ Higgs mechanism by which particles acquire
mass through coupling to the Higgs field (or
Bart Verberck is Senior Editor at Nature Physics. condensate in superconductivity language).
Unaware of the growing fame of the
AMPLITUDE MODES Higgs modes/boson in particle physics,
Back and forth condensed-matter physicists referred to
The discovery of the Higgs boson at the them as amplitude modes7. And although the
Large Hadron Collider is a story whose systems involved have energy scales many
roots lie in condensed-matter physics. In orders of magnitude lower than in particle
the 1950s, Vitaly Ginzburg and Lev Landau physics, evidence for amplitude modes
were trying to explain superconductivity emerged in condensed-matter and ultracold-
and to do so they linked phase transitions atom systems. Perhaps unsurprisingly,
to spontaneous symmetry breaking; an idea one of the leading systems for observing
that laid the foundation for the microscopic such modes are superconductors, where Bogoliubov quasiparticle interference in the
Bardeen–Cooper–Schrieffer (BCS) theory. continuous symmetry breaking leads to conductance-ratio map of a superconductor.
Inspired by these successes, Yoichiro Nambu a Mexican hat-like energy density for the Reproduced from ref. 32, NPG.
and Jeffery Goldstone applied spontaneous order parameter (pictured). The phase and
symmetry breaking in the more general amplitude oscillations of the order parameter
context of quantum field theory. This led are called the Nambu–Goldstone modes them, which offers them protection from
to the Goldstone theorem, predicting that and amplitude Higgs modes, respectively. low-energy perturbations.
a massless particle would appear whenever Unfortunately, as such modes decay to Cooper pairs can be broken, however,
a global continuous symmetry — an particle–hole pairs relatively quickly, and they break into Bogoliubov
invariance under a continuous change of the observing them in superconductors — or quasiparticles — named after
system — is spontaneously broken. any other system — is challenging. Nikolay Bogoliubov who, along with
Despite the remarkable success of the John Valatin, showed that the excitation
macroscopic description provided by spectrum of the BCS ground state could
spontaneous symmetry breaking, there is be formulated in terms of the creation of
still no accepted particle-physics analogue of fermionic quasiparticles9,10. Because of
the microscopic BCS theory. But condensed- the unusual environment in which they
matter and particle physics may cross form, such quasiparticles are a linear
paths again and a new theory beyond BCS combination of free-electron and free-hole
might emerge.  ❐ states with opposite spin. The interference
of Bogoliubov quasiparticles can be directly
Iulia Georgescu is Senior editor at Nature Physics. visualized using scanning tunnelling
microscopy (pictured). And together with
BOGOLIUBOV QUASIPARTICLES other measurement techniques such as
Broken pairs electron tunnelling or nuclear magnetic
A Cooper pair is a bound state of two resonance spectroscopies, this allows for
identical fermions (usually electrons). Such tests of the BCS theory and insights into the
a state is difficult to form between identical departures from its predictions observed in
Mexican hat potential showing the charged particles in a vacuum, but things are a growing number of materials.  ❐
Nambu–Goldstone (blue) and Higgs (red) modes. different in solids, where the bare Coulomb
Reproduced from ref. 31, NPG. repulsion is somewhat screened, allowing Giacomo Prando is Associate Editor at
much weaker or indirect interactions to Nature Nanotechnology.
sustain the bound state.
However, the massless particle predicted Cooper pairs are named after EXCITONS
by the theory proved problematic: apart Leon Cooper, who first predicted that Take charge
from the photon, no massless particles they would arise in metals in the 1950s8. By the 1930s, quantum mechanics was in full
were known in nature. Phil Anderson However, their most celebrated impact is the swing, but it was still unclear how it could
was quick to point out that, actually, in role they play in the so-called BCS theory — explain the way that light creates electronic
superconductors, massive particle-like the microscopic theory of superconductivity excitations in insulators or semiconductors.
plasmons (see ‘Plasmons: Bound to swing’) developed by Cooper, John Bardeen and Inspired by the description of excited states
could appear instead due to coupling to the John Schrieffer. A key aspect of BCS theory in molecules, Yakov Frenkel suggested that
superconducting condensate. He went on to is that the pairing interaction is mediated when the electrons of the constituent atoms
suggest that something similar might occur by phonons (see ‘Phonons: Solid vibes’). in such a materials are excited by light,
in particle physics6. Anderson’s intuition Another is that the bound states obey they become free to move from atom to
was proved right by three independent Bose–Einstein statistics, which allows them atom11. However, no charge transfer would
papers published soon after by Peter Higgs; to condense into the same quantum state. actually take place, as the negatively charged
François Englert and Robert Brout; And the binding energy of the pairs means electrons would couple — via Coulomb
and Gerald Guralnik, Carl Hagen and that there is an energy cost to breaking interactions — to the positively charged

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holes formed as a result of the excitation. A were interacting in some way, but it was POLARITONS
few years later Gregory Wannier came up decades before the interaction between light Photons in disguise
with a full quantum mechanical description and metals was truly appreciated. In bulk semiconductors, a photon can
of the structure of these bound states — A key insight was provided in 1952 by excite an electron–hole pair (exciton)
named excitons12. David Pines and David Bohm, who showed that can recombine to emit another
But excitons are not the same in all that, thanks to Coloumb interactions, the photon. This triggers several cycles of
materials, and they often fall into one of two free electrons inside metals would undergo excitation–recombination–emission,
categories, named after the early pioneers: collective oscillations, with which light waves throughout which the two separate states of
Frenkel excitons or Wannier–(Mott) could interact strongly 14. Pines and Bohm light and excitonic excitation cease to exist,
excitons. The former are strongly bound introduced the concept of a plasmon as a and the overall state is better described as a
electron–hole pairs with a relatively small quantum of the electron oscillations — the superposition of the two — an entity known
size, localized at a certain position in a name coming from an analogy with plasmas, as an exciton–polariton. Because photons
crystal, and are found in molecular and ionic as the organized electron oscillations and excitons have different dispersions in
crystals. The latter are fully delocalized and resemble the movement of negatively momentum space, there is an anticrossing
can be found in solids with higher dielectric charged particles within plasmas. region where they completely blend with
constants, such as semiconducting or In bulk metals, plasmons are the natural each other, and outside of which they regain
covalent crystals. Both types of excitons can modes of oscillation of the free electrons, their individual character.
propagate coherently, but as neutral species and their characteristic oscillation frequency
they carry no electrical current. is known as the free-electron plasma
The fundamental properties of frequency. But Rufus Ritchie predicted that
excitons are still actively researched. plasmons could also form at metal–dielectric
Studies in low-dimensional systems such interfaces, such as metal films in air 15. Such
as carbon nanotubes and van der Waals plasmons were termed surface plasmons,
monolayers show that excitons can be and they typically have much lower energy
highly anisotropic, and also remarkably than bulk plasmons. As they can interact Bose–Einstein condensation of exciton–polaritons.
robust. And at heterogeneous interfaces strongly with light fields, forming new Reproduced from ref. 33, NPG.
between organic and inorganic components, quasiparticles known as surface-plasmon
Frenkel and Wannier–Mott excitons have polaritons (see ‘Polaritons: Photons in
even been seen to couple and hybridize, disguise’), it is hoped that they can pave These quasiparticles were first described
combining delocalization with stability. the way to circuits that merge the fields of theoretically in bulk semiconductors
If this hybridization takes place inside photonics and electronics. in the pioneering works of Solomon
microcavities in the limit of strong In confined systems, such as metal Isaakovich Pekar 17, who named them
light–matter coupling, the excitons form nanoparticles, the plasmon oscillates locally light excitons, and John Hopfield18, who
new quasiparticles, known as polaritons around the surface with a frequency known coined the term polariton. It took more
(see ‘Polaritons: Photons in disguise’). as the localized surface plasmon resonance than 30 years to spot the anticrossing
As excitons consist of one positive charge frequency. The oscillation frequency, which region in experiments — made possible
and one electron, they can be seen as a determines the optical response of the by the confinement of excitonic states in
hydrogen-like complex. And in systems with metal nanoparticle, depends on a variety quantum wells and the electromagnetic field
strong interactions between charges, such of geometrical and physical parameters. inside cavities.
as low-dimensional materials, excitons can This means it can be effectively tuned The exciton–polaritons that are formed
interact with other charges to form three- by modifying the size and shape of the in such structures have an extremely low
body complexes, known as trions, and even nanoparticles, the type of metal, and the mass — about five orders of magnitude
excitonic molecules resembling H2, known surrounding dielectric environment. When below the free electron mass. In close
as biexcitons. light impinges on the nanoparticle with a analogy with an atomic Bose–Einstein
Optically excited excitonic states frequency matching that of the localized condensation, they can exist in a
are important for understanding light- surface plasmon resonance, an enhancement macroscopic quantum coherent state, even
harvesting 13. In natural photosynthetic of the incoming field occurs. Such plasmon- at room temperature (pictured). Such
systems, the delocalization of the excitons mediated, enhanced light–matter interaction polariton condensates can emit coherent
is one of the manifestations of coherent is at the core of a number of surface light without the need for population
energy transfer. In artificial systems such analysis techniques. inversion — as in a traditional laser —
as solar cells, exciton-based concepts such As well as interaction with light, raising the possibility of efficient, electrically
as multiexcitons, hot excitons and singlet Bengt Lundqvist predicted that plasmons injected polariton lasers­.
exciton fission are at the forefront of can also interact with charge carriers such Polaritons can also come in other
research on next generation devices.  ❐ as holes, which are electron quasiparticles, flavours, according to the type of excitation
forming new quasiparticles known to which the photons couple: phonon–
Elsa Couderc is Associate Editor at Nature Energy. as plasmarons16. And after remaining polaritons (see ‘Phonons: Solid vibes’)
elusive for decades, recent experimental or plasmon–polaritons (see ‘Plasmons:
PLASMONS observations of plasmarons in bismuth and Bound to swing’). Phonon–polaritons were
Bound to swing in graphene show that these quasiparticle– introduced by Kirill Borisovich Tolpygo in
In the early twentieth century Robert Wood quasiparticle interactions can indeed give 195019 and independently by Kun Huang
noticed that an unusual pattern would rise to yet another quasiparticle.  ❐ shortly after 20 as the bound states of photons
appear if you shone polarized light onto and optical phonons in ionic crystals.
a metal-backed diffraction grating. He Silvia Milana is Associate Editor at Surface plasmon–polaritons are surface
speculated that the light, grating and metal Nature Communications. waves propagating in a metal–dielectric

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or metal–air interface, produced by need to be excited in a controlled manner, which would require cutting and gluing.
electromagnetic radiation interacting with manipulated, detected and converted to other The Möbius strip is the simplest example
conduction electrons on the metal surfaces. carrier forms to maximize potential. of an object whose geometric (topological)
Both types of polaritons find applications in Although great progress has been made character provides stability.
nanophotonics, energy transfer, microscopy in generating and detecting magnons, In the 1950s and 1960s, these objects
and imaging.  ❐ manipulation remains a big problem23. allowed Tony Skyrme to describe elementary
However, advances in fabricating materials subatomic particles as geometric twists in
Maria Maragkou is Senior Editor at that have artificially-engineered magnetic a continuous quantum field — an elegant
Nature Materials. properties (known as magnonic crystals explanation for how discrete entities can
due to their resemblance to photonic emerge from the continuum. Skyrme’s
MAGNONS crystals) may provide a solution. But work24 was unfortunately soon forgotten,
Out for a spin magnons are interesting far beyond only to be revived again in the 1980s by
Imagine a spin wave as a propagating applications, as experiments show that particle physicists. However, this time it
disturbance of the precession of spins Bose–Einstein condensates of magnons can was not put back on the shelf, thanks to an
through the lattice of a magnetic material. be created at room temperature, providing unexpected advance in condensed-matter
The collective oscillations that arise from an interesting playground for probing physics: the discovery of the quantum Hall
this disturbance are called magnons. macroscopic quantum phenomena under effect. In the 1990s it became clear that
Felix Bloch first introduced the concept ambient conditions. ❐ topological defects, or skyrmions, could be
of the magnon in an effort to understand used to describe certain quantum effects in
why the spontaneous magnetization in a Lina Persechini is Associate Editor at magnetic systems.
ferromagnet seemed smaller than theory Nature Communications. Magnetic skyrmions take the form of
suggested it should be21. chiral spin textures emerging out of an
As with other quasiparticles, such as TOPOLOGICAL DEFECTS approximately flat magnetic background
phonons and plasmons, however, magnons A twist in the tale (pictured). Just as for Skryme’s description of
can also be described as propagating waves, The concept of quasiparticles provides an subatomic particles, the topological character
which are collective excitations. The best invaluable tool for describing the complex of these textures provides some form of
way to imagine this is to think of a one- emergent phenomena seen in condensed stability, which the spintronics community
dimensional chain of spins all fixed at certain matter. But few quasiparticles have the hope to exploit for device applications25.
positions. The spins will naturally precess reach of those classified as topological Skyrmions are not the only types of chiral
around their fixed point but if you disturb the defects or topological solitons, which appear textures that exist though, and domain walls
precession of one of the spins, the disturbance in particle physics, condensed matter, are a more common example. There are
can be passed along the chain as it interacts cosmology, liquid crystals, protein folding also a range of other defects and disorders
with its neighbours, in what can be thought and more — all displaying remarkably that are topological in nature, such as edge
of as a spin wave that propagates through universal behaviour. and screw dislocations and vortices in
a material. Magnons are therefore both superconductors and superfluids. But the
quasiparticles and collective excitations, and most exotic role of topological defects is
there is still active debate around whether perhaps their potential cosmological one.
collective excitations should really be Unfortunately, this is where they remain
considered as quasiparticles. Magnons are the most elusive, but with certain grand
an interesting example of how unclear this unified theories predicting the existence of
distinction really is. topological defects such as cosmic strings
It would be another thirty years and magnetic monopoles26, their detection
before Bloch’s magnons were found could have far-reaching implications.  ❐
experimentally by Bertram Brockhouse and
his collaborators. After their pioneering Giulia Pacchioni is Associate Editor at
experiments showing that neutron scattering Nature Reviews Materials.
could be used to probe phonons22, they
turned their attention to magnetic materials RELATIVISTIC FERMIONS
and, surprisingly, the behaviour observed in Beyond convention
magnetic ferrite couldn’t be simply described The standard model of particle physics is
by phonons, but was due to magnons. as successful as it is elegant. It holds that all
Magnons have now been observed in the elementary particles belong to just two
many types of magnetic materials and, as Skyrmion lattice in a magnetic thin film. classes: those with integer spin, following
spin information can be transferred without Reproduced from ref. 34, NPG. Bose–Einstein statistics and known as
motion of charged carriers, they can also be bosons; and those with half-integer spin,
found in insulators. The magnon can offer a following Fermi–Dirac statistics and known
number of interesting properties including Topological objects are difficult to as fermions. In the relativistic limit, fermions
particle-less transport, which prevents losses visualize, but you might start by considering are believed to come in three varieties:
from Joule heating, lower scattering, and long a Möbius strip — made by adding a twist Dirac, with non-zero mass and charge; Weyl,
propagation lengths. The field of research to a strip of paper before gluing its two massless, but charged; and Majorana, which
aimed at exploring magnons and developing ends together. By introducing the twist, the have mass, but no charge, and are their
magnon-based devices for data processing object becomes chiral and no continuous own antiparticle.
is known as magnonics and in order for transformation can turn the strip into Particle-physics experiments, however,
these devices to become a reality, magnons something that resembles a headband, have so far only provided fermions of the

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neutrinos are Dirac or Majorana-like. For show that this is indeed the case, with Weyl
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