Scientists have produced a new kind of particle that carries energy Go with the flow. New types of particles called 'topological plexcitons' have been engineered by researchers in the US, and they could help pave the way for more efficient energy transfers in solar cells and other forms of photonic circuits. To understand what's different about these new topological plexcitons, we need to get back to basics on some of physics involved with light and matter when they interact on the tiniest of scales. The University of California, San Diego team has managed to improve on a process known as exciton energy transfer (EET). EET describes the way light and matter exchange energy when they meet. "Energy can flow back and forth between light in a metal (so called plasmon) and light in a molecule (so called exciton)," said one of the team, biochemist Joel Yuen-Zhou . "When this exchange is much faster than their respective decay rat...
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