How a competition for electrons warps a quantum material (IMAGE)

DOE/SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory

How a competition for electrons warps a quantum material

Caption

Illustration showing distortions in a new quantum material that were produced by an electronic tug-of-war between negatively charged cobalt ions ­and positively charged calcium ions. In what’s known as the Jahn-Teller effect, each cobalt ion tries to pull calcium ions from the layers above and below it, warping the atomic lattice in the direction of the arrows in a way that had not been seen before.

Credit

Woo Jin Kim/SIMES

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