Kinks and skinks are localized lumps of energy that can travel through materials in a way similar to how a localized water wave travels. Image via MaxPixel.
Kinks and skinks are localized lumps of energy that can travel through materials in a way similar to how a localized water wave travels. Image via MaxPixel. Supersymmetry is symmetry of nature that is often hypothesized to exist among elementary particles. In a new paper that appeared in Physical Review Letters this week, physicists from the University of Amsterdam and QuSoft propose a setup where supersymmetry can also be observed between lumps of energy in a material - so-called kinks and skinks. Supersymmetry - a physicist's tool. Supersymmetry is a hypothesized symmetry of nature which connects the known types of elementary particles to different but very similar particles: their 'superpartners'. Inspired by the beauty of this idea, condensed matter physicists have proposed to use supersymmetry to help address some of the hard problems, such as the behaviour of large groups of strongly interacting quantum particles, where often numerical approaches, though limited, are the only option.
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