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Yeah. In this case it's fine, but in general it can lead to confusion. For some weird reason, condensed matter physicists keep giving their quasiparticles the
by knzhou 6y ago
Yeah. In this case it's fine, but in general it can lead to confusion.
For some weird reason, condensed matter physicists keep giving their quasiparticles the same names particle physicists give their particle particles, even though the mathematics are quite different. If you hear someone proclaiming the discovery of Majorana fermions, axions, or monopoles, it's essentially guaranteed to be a quasiparticle in a lump of metal or something. Sometimes even the articles themselves get confused about this.
- twic 6y agoIs this really so different from particle physicists' "resonances", where they see a peak in a graph and pronounce a new particle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resonance_(particle_physics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resonance_(particle_physics)
- knzhou 6y agoThat's fine because basically everything's a resonance. The only particles that aren't technically resonances are those that have infinite lifetime, i.e. just the proton, electron, and photon.
- whatshisface 6y agoThe "weird reason" is that it's an analogy. You want to name things in a way that people will be able to guess what they are from the name.