4 ms·

Only in the same way that you can think of a bubble in a bottle of water as its own entity. When we describe the motion of the bubble, what we really mean is th

Only in the same way that you can think of a bubble in a bottle of water as its own entity. When we describe the motion of the bubble, what we really mean is the collective motion of all the water particles that cause there to be a lack of water particles in the bubble region, but it's just more convenient to talk about the bubble as its own thing. We can talk about the collective state of all the electrons that leads to a hole, or we can just pretend the hole is a particle and assign equivalent properties to it. There's nothing very mysterious about it, it's a modeling trick.

jjoonathan 5y ago
Right, it's just using the same book-keeping trick for both spin and charge. This: Hole with counter-spin + Bulk of electrons, all with spin is much easier than this: Hole with no spin + Bulk of electrons but the one under the hole doesn't have spin
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
jlokier 5y ago
> There's nothing very mysterious about it, it's a modeling trick. I wouldn't say it's just a trick. They have remarkable properties. Quasiparticles (such as holes) have simple, relatively long-lived, non-dissipative properties like fundamental particles, such as momentum that is conserved along a path until an interaction, interactions with other particles, and a simpler wavefunction than would be expected from the combination of constituent fundamental particles. They emerge from large numbers of fundamental particles acting together in harmony. Like a bubble in water, except water doesn't harmonise that much, so it doesn't make a bubble with momentum (or spin) against the flow of water keep moving the same way until it collides with another bubble. The 3-body motion problem produces chaos. It's a wonder that a 1000-body collection of electrons and nuclei holds a quasiparticle together instead of quickly turning into a non-linear, thermodynamic mess, and that interactions with other particles couple with the entire collection at once, to maintain the integrity of the quasiparticle. At some level it's like a bubble, but the harmony is decidedly a quantum effect.
ncmncm 5y ago
If it behaves enough like an actual particle, it calls into question the degree to which the things we think are actual particles really are.

jjoonathan 5y ago

Right, it's just using the same book-keeping trick for both spin and charge. This: Hole with counter-spin + Bulk of electrons, all with spin is much easier than this: Hole with no spin + Bulk of electrons but the one under the hole doesn't have spin

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

jlokier 5y ago

> There's nothing very mysterious about it, it's a modeling trick. I wouldn't say it's just a trick. They have remarkable properties. Quasiparticles (such as holes) have simple, relatively long-lived, non-dissipative properties like fundamental particles, such as momentum that is conserved along a path until an interaction, interactions with other particles, and a simpler wavefunction than would be expected from the combination of constituent fundamental particles. They emerge from large numbers of fundamental particles acting together in harmony. Like a bubble in water, except water doesn't harmonise that much, so it doesn't make a bubble with momentum (or spin) against the flow of water keep moving the same way until it collides with another bubble. The 3-body motion problem produces chaos. It's a wonder that a 1000-body collection of electrons and nuclei holds a quasiparticle together instead of quickly turning into a non-linear, thermodynamic mess, and that interactions with other particles couple with the entire collection at once, to maintain the integrity of the quasiparticle. At some level it's like a bubble, but the harmony is decidedly a quantum effect.

ncmncm 5y ago

If it behaves enough like an actual particle, it calls into question the degree to which the things we think are actual particles really are.