Theorized method for exciting solitary electrons demonstrated

Nature : Seventeen years ago, Leonid Levitov of MIT and his colleagues theorized that a time-varying voltage applied to a nanocircuit according to a specific pattern would result in a single excited electron. Now, Christian Glattli of the Saclay Nuclear Research Center in Gif-sur-Yvette, France, and his team have demonstrated that theoretical system. They use a supercooled nanocircuit created by two electrodes narrowly separated by a conductor. To honor Levitov and because the individual electrons appear in the surface of the nanocircuit similarly to solitons , Glattli’s team dubbed the pulses levitons. Although other methods for creating individual electron pulses exist, this system is much simpler and appears to be easier to scale up. The technique provides a possible source of electrons for testing quantum phenomena such as entanglement or for use as carriers of information in quantum computing.