holon

Meaning

Noun

• One of three kinds of quasiparticle (the others being the spinon and orbiton) that electrons in solids are able to split into during the process of spin–charge separation, when extremely tightly confined at temperatures close to absolute zero.
• Something that is both a part and a whole.

Origin

• hole + -on
• holo- + -on, from Ancient Greek ὅλος ("whole") with the suffix -on suggesting a part. in his 1967 book The Ghost in the Machine.