Study awarded by Nobel prize in Physics to create the technology of the future – VEJA.com

Rita Loiola

access_time oct 4 2016, 12h28 – Updated on oct 4 2016, 20h01

the winners of The Nobel prize for Physics 2016: David J. Thouless, Duncan Haldane and Michael Kosterlitz (Trinity Hall/University of Cambridge – Dominic Reuter/Reuters – Lehtikuva/Roni Rekomaa/AFP)

The work of the trio, british received the Nobel prize for Physics on Tuesday lays the foundations for the technology of the future, with more devices fast, effective, and revolutionary, such as quantum computing. David J. Thouless, Duncan Haldane and J. Michael Kosterlitz, working in american universities, has helped to decipher the behavior of matter into new physical states, knowledge that should help in the creation of the electronics of the next generation.

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"The work of these researchers is part of condensed matter physics, today a field fundamental to nanotechnology, the development of new devices, sensors, and quantum computing", explains the physical Adalberto Fazzi, professor of the Institute of Physics of the University of São Paulo (USP) and Federal University of ABC (UFABC), to the site to SEE. "His research transformed the way we think about new materials."

States topological

The scientists were awarded for "discoveries theoretical about phase transitions topological and phases of topological matter", according to the statement of the committee of the Nobel prize. In other words, what the researchers did was to apply a branch of mathematics known as topology to discover and characterize new states of matter (the best known are three: solid, liquid and gas).

At the beginning of the 1970s, Thouless and Kosterlitz showed that the superconductivity – or the capacity that certain materials have to be subjected to very low temperatures to conduct electric current without resistance – could occur in materials that are fine. They explained the mechanism, and how were the transitions between the phases of the physical. The effects of this phenomenon are known today by experts as a transition Kosterlitz-Thouless.

In the following decade, Thouless and Haldane extended the studies and, independently, found that the topology could also be used for the understanding of the properties of strong magnetic fields found in some materials at very low temperatures. This knowledge opened up space for new research that, currently, it is fairly clear that these "phases topological", or new states of matter, can happen not only in very thin materials, but also in substances three-dimensional. New generations of electronics, which use superconductors, or materials with superfluidez (that display these new physical states), are currently constructed based on the knowledge released by the trio british.

"Several theoretical developments have been made in the studies of these scientists and, currently, we have experimental materials constructed with this knowledge that will bring us to a better technology and more efficient", explains Fazzi.

Fazzi studies the so-called "insulators topological" materials derived from the studies awarded by the Nobel, which, in general, are insulators, but exhibit a surface able to conduct electricity. In this way, they are able to allow the passage of electrical current without loss of energy (in the form of heat, for example), important properties for the construction of future computers and electronics.