Pines’ demon observed as a 3D acoustic plasmon in Sr₂RuO₄

The characteristic excitation of a metal is its plasmon, which is a quantized collective oscillation of its electron density. In 1956, David Pines predicted that a distinct type of plasmon, dubbed a ‘demon’, could exist in three-dimensional (3D) metals containing more than one species of charge carrier¹. Consisting of out-of-phase movement of electrons in different bands, demons are acoustic, electrically neutral and do not couple to light, so have never been detected in an equilibrium, 3D metal. Nevertheless, demons are believed to be critical for diverse phenomena including phase transitions in mixed-valence semimetals², optical properties of metal nanoparticles³, soundarons in Weyl semimetals⁴ and high-temperature superconductivity in, for example, metal hydrides^3,5–7. Here, we present evidence for a demon in Sr₂RuO₄ from momentum-resolved electron energy-loss spectroscopy. Formed of electrons in the β and γ bands, the demon is gapless with critical momentum q _c = 0.08 reciprocal lattice units and room-temperature velocity v = (1.065 ± 0.12) × 10⁵ m s⁻¹ that undergoes a 31% renormalization upon cooling to 30 K because of coupling to the particle–hole continuum. The momentum dependence of the intensity of the demon confirms its neutral character. Our study confirms a 67-year old prediction and indicates that demons may be a pervasive feature of multiband metals.