Credit: Jill Hemman/Oak Ridge National Laboratory, U.S. Dept. of Energy
Long-range ordering of magnetic ions in a graphene-like material (on left) is disrupted by placing nonmagnetic ions on the honeycomb lattice, resulting in a quantum spin liquid state (on right). As neutrons (blue line) scatter off the magnetically disordered material, they produce unusual particles such as Majorana fermions (purple wave) that move through the lattice disrupting or breaking apart magnetic interactions between “spinning” electrons.