Physicists at UC San Diego have for the first time observed the spontaneous production of coherence within “excitons,” the bound pairs of electrons and holes that enable semiconductors to function as novel electronic devices.

Scientists working in the emerging field of nanotechnology, which is finding commercial applications for ultra-small material objects, believe that this newly discovered property could eventually help the development of novel computing devices and provide them with new insights into the quirky quantum properties of matter.
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“What is coherence and why is it so important?” said Butov. “To start with, modern physics was born by the discovery that all particles in nature are also waves. Coherence means that such waves are all ‘in sync.’ The spontaneous coherence of the matter waves is the reason behind some of the most exciting phenomena in nature such as superconductivity and lasing.”