Quasiparticle - Wikipedia - atomic nuclei  ## Metadata - Author: **atomic nuclei** - Full Title: Quasiparticle - Wikipedia - Category: #articles - URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quasiparticle ## Highlights - In physics, quasiparticles and collective excitations are closely related emergent phenomena arising when a microscopically complicated system such as a solid behaves as if it contained different weakly interacting particles in vacuum. For example, as an electron travels through a semiconductor, its motion is disturbed in a complex way by its interactions with other electrons and with atomic nuclei. The electron behaves as though it has a different effective mass travelling unperturbed in vacuum. Such an electron is called an electron quasiparticle.[1] In another example, the aggregate motion of electrons in the valence band of a semiconductor or a hole band in a metal[2] behave as though the material instead contained positively charged quasiparticles called electron holes. Other quasiparticles or collective excitations include the phonon, a quasiparticle derived from the vibrations of atoms in a solid, and the plasmons, a particle derived from plasma oscillation