Fermionic condensate in the context of "Fermion"

In classical physics and general chemistry, matter is any substance that has mass and takes up space by having volume. All everyday objects that can be touched are ultimately composed of atoms, which are made up of interacting subatomic particles. In everyday as well as scientific usage, matter generally includes atoms and anything made up of them, and any particles (or combination of particles) that act as if they have both rest mass and volume. However it does not include massless particles such as photons, or other energy phenomena or waves such as light or heat. Matter exists in various states (also known as phases). These include classical everyday phases such as solid, liquid, and gas – for example water exists as ice, liquid water, and gaseous steam – but other states are possible, including plasma, Bose–Einstein condensates, fermionic condensates, and quark–gluon plasma.

Usually atoms can be imagined as a nucleus of protons and neutrons, and a surrounding "cloud" of orbiting electrons which "take up space". However, this is only somewhat correct because subatomic particles and their properties are governed by their quantum nature, which means they do not act as everyday objects appear to act – they can act like waves as well as particles, and they do not have well-defined sizes or positions. In the Standard Model of particle physics, matter is not a fundamental concept because the elementary constituents of atoms are quantum entities which do not have an inherent "size" or "volume" in any everyday sense of the word. Due to the exclusion principle and other fundamental interactions, some "point particles" known as fermions (quarks, leptons), and many composites and atoms, are effectively forced to keep a distance from other particles under everyday conditions; this creates the property of matter which appears to us as matter taking up space.

There are several proposed types of exotic matter:

• Hypothetical particles and states of matter that have not yet been encountered, but whose properties would be within the realm of mainstream physics if found to exist.
• Several particles whose existence has been experimentally confirmed that are conjectured to be exotic hadrons and within the Standard Model.
• States of matter that are not commonly encountered, such as Bose–Einstein condensates, fermionic condensates, nuclear matter, quantum spin liquid, string-net liquid, supercritical fluid, color-glass condensate, quark–gluon plasma, Rydberg matter, Rydberg polaron, photonic matter, Wigner crystal, Superfluid and time crystal but whose properties are entirely within the realm of mainstream physics.
• Forms of matter that are poorly understood, such as dark matter and mirror matter.
• Ordinary matter that when placed under high pressure, may result in dramatic changes in its physical or chemical properties.
• Degenerate matter
• Exotic atoms

Deborah Shiu-lan Jin (Chinese: 金秀兰; pinyin: Jīn Xiùlán; November 15, 1968 – September 15, 2016) was an American physicist and fellow with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST); Professor Adjunct, Department of Physics at the University of Colorado; and a fellow of the JILA, a NIST joint laboratory with the University of Colorado.

She was considered a pioneer in polar molecular quantum chemistry. From 1995 to 1997 she worked with Eric Cornell and Carl Wieman at JILA, where she was involved in some of the earliest studies of dilute gas Bose-Einstein condensates. In 2003 Jin's team at JILA made the first fermionic condensate, a new form of matter. She used magnetic traps and lasers to cool fermionic atomic gases to less than 100 billionths of a degree above zero, successfully demonstrating quantum degeneracy and the formation of a molecular Bose-Einstein condensate. Jin was frequently mentioned as a strong candidate for the Nobel Prize in Physics. In 2002, Discover magazine recognized her as one of the 50 most important women in science.