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Solid materials are much more complex than single atoms and support several types of multiple particle states. One noteworthy example is the Cooper pairs that result in conventional superconductivity. Spin-liquid states are also multi particle states with the interesting property that they exhibit entanglement between the magnetic moments of the atoms, and it is this entanglement that makes them intersting for quantum informatics because it can be used fo form qbits.

An intersting feature of the Herbertsmitihe crystals that were used for the study is that have a geometric structure that frustrates the ordering of the magnetic moments (or spins) of the atoms. The magnetic moment will try to align in opposite directions but the crystal structure has three magnetic moments in each unit cell and therefore only two of them can allign in an energetically favorable state while the last one is unable to moove into a stable equlibrium. Since there is no distinction between the three magnetic moments per se, the frustration is spread across the whole solid structure and a "large" entangled stage is formed.

Because these states are not locallized they are not constrained by the atomic properties of the cryatal atoms and therefore they are allowed to accept excitations at a continous range of engergies rather than the discrete ones that we normally see. It is a little bit similar to free electrons in metals. They can also be excited by a continous range of energies because they are free to move within the material.

An important thing to note, however, is that these experiments were carried out at 1.6 K, where thermal fluctuations play a very small role compared to room temperature. Therefore it is not likely that this effect will be portable to regular electronics devices. More likely quantum informatics applications include massive server like facilities that has the infrastructure to cool the devices down to cryogenic temperatures and the best we can hope for in terms of avaliability is some kind of cloud service.

There is an interesting press release at Phys.org: http://phys.org/news/2012-12-newly-quantum-liquid-beauty-sim...

Edit: Corrected BSC pairs to Cooper pairs, and added a bit more information after reading the actual paper which is available for those sitting behind a pay wall: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v492/n7429/full/nature1...