Momentum area is a basic idea in physics that explains electron movement in regards to energy and instructions, instead of their precise physical position.

Its equivalent, position area, is the world where familiar phenomena like water vortices or typhoons take place.

Previously, even quantum vortices in products had actually just been observed in position area.

8 years earlier, Dr. Roderich Moessner from limit Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems and the Würzburg-Dresden Cluster of Excellence ct.qmat thought that a quantum twister might likewise form in momentum area.

At the time, he explained the phenomenon as a smoke ring, because, like smoke rings, it includes vortices.

Up until now, no one understood how to determine them.

To find the quantum twister in momentum area, Dr. Moessner and associates boosted a widely known strategy called ARPES (angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy).

“ARPES is an essential tool in speculative solid-state physics,” described Dr. Maximilian Ünzelmann, a scientist with the Experimentelle Physik VII and Würzburg-Dresden Cluster of Excellence ct.qmat at the Universität Würzburg.

“It includes shining light on a product sample, drawing out electrons, and determining their energy and exit angle.”

“This offers us a direct take a look at a product’s electronic structure in momentum area.”

“By skillfully adjusting this technique, we had the ability to determine orbital angular momentum.”

The group’s work appears in the journal Physical Review X

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T. Figgemeier et al2025. Imaging Orbital Vortex Lines in Three-Dimensional Momentum Space. Phys. Rev. X 15, 011032; doi: 10.1103/ PhysRevX.15.011032