The charge and spin of an electron are considered to be inseparably connected. But in a strictly one-dimensional quantum world, both quantum – spin and charge – properties are separable from each other.
This fifty-year-old prediction has now been confirmed by an experiment conducted by a team from the Munich Center for Quantum Science and Technology (MCQST). Physicists from the Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics in Garching are playing a leading role. For their successful demonstration, which is now published in the journal Science, they used a quantum simulator.
This result is exciting from the perspective of basic research in quantum physics but, above all, however, this experiment successfully demonstrates that quantum simulators are developing into a technology to be taken seriously. (Max Planck Institute)