quasiparticle

quasiparticle, in physics, a disturbance, in a medium, that behaves as a particle and that may conveniently be regarded as one. A rudimentary analogy is that of a bubble in a glass of beer: the bubble is not really an independent object but a phenomenon, the displacement of a volume of beer by carbon dioxide gas, but, because of the characteristics of the surface of liquid in contact with the gas, the bubble retains a certain identity as it rises and floats. It, like a quasiparticle, carries properties characteristic of objects, such as size, shape, energy, and momentum. Two bubbles can bounce off each other; quasiparticles, too, undergo collisions. Some specific quasiparticles are the exciton, phonon, magnon, and polaron (qq.v.).

Quasiparticles are studied in connection with solid-state physics and nuclear physics because they play an important role in determining the properties of matter. There is reason to suspect, however, that all particles may actually be disturbances in some underlying medium and, hence, are themselves quasiparticles.