The Nobel Prize for Physics in 2016 was awarded to British researchers David Thouless, Duncan Haldane and Michael Kosterlitz for their theoretical discoveries on exotic states of matter, paving the way for the development of new materials with unusual properties. Made this Tuesday, 10/04, by the organization that awards the prize, the Karolinska Institute, in Sweden. Half of the prize of 8 million Swedish kronor (about R$ 3 million) will be awarded to Thouless and the other half to Haldane and Kosterlitz.

Thouless was born in England, in 1934, and works at the University of Washington (United States). Haldane, also English, was born in 1951 and is a researcher at the University of Princeton (United States). Kosterlitz was born in Scotland in 1942 and works at Brown University (United States). According to the Nobel committee, the laureate scientists conducted studies on the “topological phase transitions of matter” that “opened the door to an unknown world where matter may assume strange states”. The discoveries have advanced our knowledge beyond the already famous states of matter (however obvious they may seem). Everyone is familiar with solid, liquid, and gaseous, and how different materials can go from one state to another through the so-called phase transition.

The beginning

The works begun in the 1970s, in the area of ​​condensed matter physics, when the trio used advanced mathematics to redefine the possible properties of solid materials, demonstrating that superconductivity – the ability of electrons to pass through matter without any resistance – is possible in extremely fine surfaces. The key word for the award was “topology”, a mathematical concept that describes properties that can only change in a whole step scale. For example, in describing the shape of a donut and a pretzel, we can say that the first has a hole and the second has three. And this description is topological – there is no way to imagine a shape that has two and a half holes.

Thouless succeeded to explain an earlier experiment with very thin electrically conductive layers, in which the conductivity had been accurately measured as independent steps. He showed that these steps have a topological nature. Haldane discovered how topological concepts can be used to understand properties of small magnetic chains found in some materials.

Through to the work of the three British, several topological phases are known, not only in thin layers and wires, but also in ordinary three-dimensional materials. The research may sound ethereal, but it’s on the frontier of technology. Physicists today discuss the prospects for insulators, superconductors and topological metals, and their properties will be useful for the creation of future electronic devices and even for quantum computers, which use the fundamental properties of matter to process information.