ELECTRONS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY, AND TWISTED (“TORSIONED”) ...

This is a fun article that was shared by T.S. (with our thanks), and I hope it provides much grist for your own high octane speculative mill as it did for me. The article concerns what happens to electrons when a lattice structure is twisted in just the right amount to enable some very interesting supper-conducting effects to emerge:

Theoretical physicist uncovers how twisting layers of a material can generate mysterious electron-path-deflecting effect

There are so many things in this article that have set my mind working out all sorts of high octane speculations I cannot even begin to catalogue them all, so I will stick to a couple that intrigue me. Firstly, consider the following:

In a study published in Nature, they investigated spirally stacked tungsten disulfide (WS₂) crystals and discovered that, by twisting these layers, light could be used to manipulate electrons. The result is analogous to the Coriolis force, which curves the paths of objects in a rotating frame, like how wind and ocean currents behave on Earth.

"What we discovered is that by simply twisting the material, we could control how electrons move," says Agarwal, Srinivasa Ramanujan Distinguished Scholar in the School of Engineering and Applied Science.

...

Together, they developed a theoretical model for electron behavior in twisted environments, based on the speculation that a continuously twisted lattice would create a strange, complex landscape where electrons could exhibit new quantum behaviors.

"The structure of these materials is reminiscent of DNA or a spiral staircase. This means that the usual rules of periodicity in a crystal—where atoms sit in neat, repeating patterns—no longer apply," Ji says.

Mele says the effect mirrored the Coriolis force, an observation that is usually associated with the mysterious sideways deflections seen in rotating systems. Mathematically, this force closely resembles a magnetic deflection, explaining why the electrons behaved as though a magnetic field were present even when there was none. This insight was crucial, as it tied together the twisting of the crystal and the interaction with circularly polarized light. (emphasis added)

I noted, to my delight, when I read this passage that one of my oft-repeated sayings - DNA is a kind of aperiodic crystal - seems to be corroborated in a way that would allow non-biological materials to mimic the quantum effects of DNA on electrons, not by manipulations of local fields, but purely and simply on the manipulatations of lattice geometry, simply by twisting that lattice structure in a particular way and within what appear to be certain thresholds of behavior, indicated by the degree of twist that appears to produce superconducting effects.
Needless to say, this implies all sorts of material engineering possibilities, not the least in the engineering of artificial crystals to produce certain effects.  And yes, for those of you who have read my Giza Death Star books, both the original trilogy and the updated Giza Death Star Revisited, this reminds me quite strongly of my hypothesized "phi crystals" that I speculated about, i.e., crystals with such peculiar indices of refraction that they were able literally to trap light once light entered the crystal, and that thus the crystal acted as a kind of miniature singularity.

With that in mind, the following statements left me really reeling with speculations:

(All of this) introduces a new degree of control over electron movement, achieved purely through the geometric twist of the material. What's more, the work also revealed a strong optical nonlinearity, meaning that the material's response to light was amplified significantly.

"In typical materials, optical nonlinearity is weak," Agarwal says, "but in our twisted system, it's remarkably strong, suggesting potential applications in photonic devices and sensors."

 

Another aspect of the study was the moiré patterns, which are the result of a slight angular misalignment between layers that plays a significant role in the effect. In this system, the moiré length scale—created by the twist—is on par with the wavelength of light, making it possible for light to interact strongly with the material's structure.

 

"This interaction between light and the moiré pattern adds a layer of complexity that enhances the effects we're observing," Agarwal says, "and this coupling is what allows the light to control electron behavior so effectively."

When light interacted with the twisted structure, the team observed complex wavefunctions and behaviors not seen in regular two-dimensional materials. This result ties into the concept of "higher-order quantum geometric quantities," like Berry curvature multipoles, which provide insight into the material's quantum states and behaviors.

These findings suggest that the twisting fundamentally alters the electronic structure, creating new pathways for controlling electron flow in ways that traditional materials cannot. (Italicized emphasis added, underlined emphasis in the original)

Notice that there is some sort of coupling effect between light and electrons or electricity in this twisted lattice structure, an implications with strong bio-physical implications - just think of the potentials(no pun intended) for healing or disease induction, and think of those implciations in connection with some Soviet era bio-physics research as outlined in the late Tom Bearden's Gravitobiology, for example. But even more importantly, this coupling effect of light and electricity is  - to repeat the fundamental principle once again - caused by the geometry of the twist of the materials themselves.  The resulting lattice structure is, in effect, a field with unusual effects. Again, this is not the same as my off-the-end-of-the-twig speculation about "phi crystals" that are acting like mini-singularities, but it is a step in that direction, and again, it may also be yet another step toward super-conductivity at ever higher (hotter) temperatures.

As I read this article, I was reminded of Richard C. Hoagland's famous statement: "What are the three laws of hyper-dimensional physics? (1) Rotation, (2) Rotation, and (3) Rotation."  And of course, another way to say "twist" is to say "torsion."

See you on the flip side...

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