08863 IUPAC Gold Book - quasiparticle 10.1351/goldbook.08863 08863 current 1 Discrete disorder in a multi-particulate system that exhibits particle-specific behavior and properties. A real particle can exist by itself, out of other real particles, while a quasiparticle cannot. It exists only within a multi-particulate system, like a gas bubble inside water or beer. It looks and behaves like a particle, but it does not exist outside liquid. Such a bubble is a macroscopic quasiparticle. Characteristics typical of particles, such as the mass (referred to as effective mass), momentum, energy, velocity, mobility and ability to undergo collisions can be assigned to quasiparticles. Examples of quasiparticles related to electromagnetic field responsive materials are electron hole, exciton, magnon, phonon, plasmon, polaron and soliton. There are two main classes of quasiparticles: those of the excitation type whose motion corresponds to a motion of individual particles interacting with other parts of the system; examples are exciton, hole, soliton and polaron;those that originate from a synchronized collective motion of the whole system, referred to as collective excitations or collective modes; examples are magnon, plasmon and phonon. electromagnetic field responsive https://goldbook.iupac.org//terms/view/08803 hole https://goldbook.iupac.org//terms/view/08826 PAC, 2022, 94, 15. 'Glossary of terms relating to electronic, photonic and magnetic properties of polymers (IUPAC Recommendations 2021)' on page 44 (https://doi.org/10.1515/pac-2020-0501) https://goldbook.iupac.org/terms/view/08863/html https://goldbook.iupac.org/terms/view/08863/json https://goldbook.iupac.org/terms/view/08863/plain Citation: 'quasiparticle' in IUPAC Compendium of Chemical Terminology, 5th ed. International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry; 2025. Online version 5.0.0, 2025. 10.1351/goldbook.08863 The IUPAC Gold Book is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike CC BY-SA 4.0 International (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) for individual terms. If you are interested in licensing the Gold Book for commercial use, please contact the IUPAC Executive Director at executivedirector@iupac.org . The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) is continuously reviewing and, where needed, updating terms in the Compendium of Chemical Terminology (the IUPAC Gold Book). Users of these terms are encouraged to include the version of a term with its use and to check regularly for updates to term definitions that you are using. 2026-07-13T02:40:38+00:00