Water and quantum magnets share critical physics

Image by JamiesRabbits (Flickr). Water can freeze from liquid to solid ice or boil into a gas. In the kitchen these so-called phase transitions aren't smooth, but at high pressure their discontinuous nature is smoothed out. An international team of physicists, including UvA-IoP physicists Philippe Corboz and Schelto Crone, has now discovered the same behaviour in certain quantum magnets. The research was published in Nature this week. In physics, substances exist in phases, such as solid, liquid, or gas. When a material crosses from one phase into another, we talk about a phase transition: think of water boiling into steam, turning from a liquid into a gas.