Plutonium (VIDEO)
Caption
This is an artist impression of the valence-fluctuating ground state of plutonium. Due to strong interactions between the itinerant conduction electrons (denoted in purple) and the localized valence electrons in plutonium, its electronic ground state fluctuates (center panel) between three distinct electronic configurations (shown on top) that contain 4 (5f4), 5 (5f5) and 6 (5f6) 5f electrons, respectively. Because the 5f4 and, 5f5 valence configurations exhibits a magnetic moment (denoted by the arrows), whereas the 5f6 is nonmagnetic, the valence fluctuations simultaneously drive magnetic fluctuations, demonstrating that the magnetism in plutonium is not "missing" but dynamic.
Credit
Credit: Marc Janoschek/LANL.
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