Fractons: The Future of Information Storage
Fractons, fractions of spin excitations, are immobile and could be used for secure information storage. Theoretical physicists have modeled octahedral crystal structures with antiferromagnetically interacting corner atoms to reveal special patterns with characteristic pinch points in the spin correlations, which can be detected experimentally in a real material with neutron experiments. Quantum fluctuations do not enhance the visibility of fractons, but on the contrary, completely blur them, even at absolute zero temperature. The next step is to develop a model in which quantum fluctuations can be regulated up or down to study the extended quantum electrodynamic theory with its fractons in more detail.