{"id":560079,"date":"2026-06-29T15:18:13","date_gmt":"2026-06-29T15:18:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/560079\/"},"modified":"2026-06-29T15:18:13","modified_gmt":"2026-06-29T15:18:13","slug":"physicists-discover-a-fundamental-limit-to-electrical-resistance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/560079\/","title":{"rendered":"Physicists Discover a Fundamental Limit to Electrical Resistance"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Artist\u2019s<\/a>An artist\u2019s impression of the resistivity that results from cold atomic collisions. Researchers investigating interaction-induced resistivity of ultracold atoms in a checkerboard-like landscape observe a quantum enhancement of their likelihood of colliding, akin to how ducks that move in bubbles would collide as if they were the size of the bubbles, rather than their actual size. Credit: Haiwei Hou<\/p>\n

A quantum simulation found a ceiling on resistivity caused by electron collisions.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Every time electricity flows through a wire, some of its energy is inevitably lost as heat because electrons collide with one another and with the material around them. But just how much can these collisions increase electrical resistance? A new study suggests there is a fundamental limit.<\/p>\n

To investigate, researchers from the University of Toronto, L\u2019\u00c9cole Normale Sup\u00e9rieure in Paris, and Lehigh University turned to an unusual stand-in for electrons: ultracold potassium atoms cooled to temperatures just above absolute zero.<\/p>\n

By precisely controlling how often the atoms collided, they found that resistance increased only up to a certain point before leveling off. The discovery provides rare experimental evidence for a microscopic limit to resistivity and could improve scientists\u2019 understanding of electron behavior in quantum materials.<\/p>\n

\u201cElectron-on-electron collisions are known to increase resistivity in some pure materials,\u201d explains Professor Joseph Thywissen in the Department of Physics and the Center for Quantum Information and Quantum Control in the Faculty of Arts & Science at the University of Toronto, senior author of a study published in Physical Review Letters. \u201cThe energy produced by electrical resistance shows up as heat. Transmission lines, for instance, lose up to 8% of the generated electrical power. Resistivity is also interesting to study because it can be a signature of new physics in materials.\u201d<\/p>\n

Light lattice isolates collisions<\/p>\n

The experiment relied on an optical lattice, a grid made of light that holds atoms in place and allows them to act like electrons moving through a solid. This controlled setup let the scientists recreate extreme conditions that ordinary solid materials cannot reach and focus specifically on how collisions affect resistance.<\/p>\n

\"Robyn<\/a>Physics doctoral students Robyn Learn and Frank Corapi, co-first authors, with Professor Joseph Thywissen. Credit: Jo-Anne McArthur<\/p>\n

\u201cWe observed that the atoms, which are only a few nanometers in size, bump into each other as if they were much larger,\u201d says Thywissen. \u201cThis quantum enhancement of the effective atom size makes collisions on a given lattice site much more likely, increasing the resistivity of the system.\u201d<\/p>\n

Resistance reaches a ceiling<\/p>\n

When the interactions between atoms became very strong, collision-driven resistivity no longer kept increasing. Instead, it reached a saturation point. The result suggests that resistance caused by electron scattering in metals may face a similar upper limit.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur results provide a clear microscopic understanding of how resistivity works in low-density metals and open the door to new studies of strongly correlated atomic systems and quantum materials,\u201d says Thywissen.<\/p>\n

Reference: \u201cLattice Unitarity: Saturated Collisional Resistivity in Hubbard Metals\u201d by Frank Corapi, Robyn T. Learn, Benjamin Driesen, Antoine Lefebvre, Xavier Leyronas, Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Chevy, Cora J. Fujiwara and Joseph H. Thywissen, 26 May 2026,\u00a0Physical Review Letters.
DOI: 10.1103\/bhw8-p536<\/a><\/p>\n

Funding: Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, Agence Nationale de la Recherche, Institut Universitaire de France<\/p>\n

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Follow us on Google<\/a> and Google News<\/a>.<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An artist\u2019s impression of the resistivity that results from cold atomic collisions. Researchers investigating interaction-induced resistivity of ultracold…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":560080,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[271],"tags":[208914,18,19,17,909,452,3358,1098,133,3843],"class_list":["post-560079","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-physics","tag-condensed-matter","tag-eire","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-materials-science","tag-physics","tag-quantum-materials","tag-quantum-physics","tag-science","tag-university-of-toronto"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116834069211386009","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/560079","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=560079"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/560079\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/560080"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=560079"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=560079"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=560079"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}