Thermal energy in ordinary crystal materials takes the form of tiny atomic vibrations that ripple through the material in waves. Instead of spreading evenly through the material, some of the energy will clump into little packets. Scientists had thought that these energy packets, which they call intrinsic localized modes, or ILMs, form randomly if thermal energy is distributed evenly across the crystals. But an experiment at Oak Ridge National Laboratory's Spallation Neutron Source shows that widely held assumption to be incorrect. The experiment shows the ILMs actually organizing themselves into patterns instead of forming randomly and then shifting back and forth among different patterns as the temperature changes. Besides forcing theorists to rethink their calculations, the discovery has a wide range of potential applications in telecommunications, optics and technologies for which heat flow is important, such as thermoelectric materials.
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