Hmm, either this article very poorly describes the phenomenon, or it is way outside of my understanding of quantum physics. Which, admittedly, is not great, since I only did a year of p-chem.
What I am having trouble with is the idea that an electron jumping from one quantum state to another leaves behind a hole that acts like a particle. For one thing, my understanding is that electrons are not particles as much as they are discreet energy packets. So, how can it leave a hole? And how can a hole behave like an anti-electron?
I’m hoping that the article was thoroughly peer-reviewed. I think I’ll withhold judgment until others have replicated the findings, preferably using alternate methods of observation. Otherwise, these researchers may simply be describing and interpreting an artifact. These things happen.
“For one thing, my understanding is that electrons are not particles as much as they are discreet energy particle.”
I was always taught electrons were waves until you isolated one, and then it became a point particle. I think Einstein came up with that duality.
Some time ago at Lowes, I bought a few 2x4s and cut off some of the twine, that is real light, to tie them down and tucked it in my back pocket. When I got to my truck, I realized that I had tucked the spool end into my pocket and walked at least one hundred feet to my truck, stringing it behind me. For that little moment, I experienced the brilliance of Einstein.
The "hole" is talking about a missing spot
for an electron in the, well, call it a mobile electron lattice in certain metals. Conductivity, you know, means that they electrons are labile rather than more or less strictly localized within a specific orbital as in discrete gaseous molecules.
One analogy might be to those old-fashioned theater marquee lights:
If you look at it, at first it seems like the blacked areas are moving: in fact, it is the activity of the lights that makes it seem so.
The lit-up lights in the marquee are the electrons, the unlit lights are the holes.
For one thing, my understanding is that electrons are not particles as much as they are discreet energy packets.
TLDR; Electrons are not particles or "discreet energy packets," they are neither and how we perceive them depends both on the tools we use and by the very act of our perception - and even more strangely - but our potential ability to perform the act of perception. Einstein refused (or at least preferred not) to believe in any
quantum spookiness -- but what did he know!
Longer answer:
As with Schrödinger's cat which is not alive or dead or even both (it is, in theory, neither,) electrons are not particles nor "discreet energy packets" (an imprecise description of the probablity distribution of the results that would be returned by measuring the electon's energy field,) and - like the cat - electrons are not one or the other or even both. they are neither.
As you are probably aware, if you wish to set up an experiment to determine the location of an electron viewed as a particle- that can be done. But at the same time if you wish to set up an experiment to determine the probability distribution of the electron's energy field (commonly described as a probability wave) - that can also be done. So an electron is an energy field. But again, nope -
a "thing" can not be two separate and distinct "things" at the same time. Only our "view" of whatever it is that we are viewing can allow that
apparent impossibility. AND our action of viewing actually impinges on the results returned by our experiments.
But how can our act of viewing affect the outcome of our experiment you might ask as that directly conflicts with our traditional scientific belief in the separation of the experiment and the experimenter? (Does a tree falling in the forest make a noise if there is no one there to hear it? - Of course it does according to traditional scientific thought.)
You are, of course, familiar with the double-slit experiment where a particle is found when detectors are set up to determine which of two slits it traveled through, while an energy field described by its probability wave function is found when no detectors are in place... Well, recent experiments have further mystified this strange behavior. Called the delayed choice double-slit experiment, the results of the experiment (particle or wave) depend not on whether the experimenter determined or did not determine which of the two slits the particle passed through, but rather,
whether the experimenter was in any way capable of making that determination (and not that he actually did make the determination.)
A brief synopsis of the weirdness: if a double-slit experiment is set up and detectors are placed on each slit and the data is recorded - BUT NOT VIEWED BY THE EXPERIMENTER - and then the experiment's results (particle or wave) are looked at the results will show that a particle passed through a slit. BUT if the detectors' records are erased
before the experiment's results are viewed - then, when viewed, the results will show that a wave passed through both slits.
In other words, the results of the experiment are determined by the actions of the experimenter (erase or don't erase the detectors records) AFTER the experiment has been completed.
Now, just for fun, add a second experimenter into the mix who will, based on the flip of a coin, erase or not erase the detectors' records
before the first experimenter looks at the results of the experiment. What do you think the first experimenter will see when he looks at the results of the experiment. Yep, quantum weirdness is
really weird.
So, is an electron a particle or a "discreet energy packet?" Nope, it's neither. Its nature of being is something that is outside of our plane of existence and our experiments' views of its nature depend on our actions. This coupling of the experimenter and the experiment fly directly in the face of our historic separation of the experimenter and his experiment and throw the very idea of a universe ruled by cause and effect into question. Cool stuff, huh?
_________________________________________________________
Note: please forgive my playing a bit fast and loose with various terms in this post as quantum theory is not my field - just a part time hobby which I am brushing back up on as my son-in-law, a Sheldon Cooper type nerd of the physic community, will be in for Christmas and much whiskey will be consumed while the Tater clan discusses this stuff.