Orbitons are one of three quasiparticles, along with holons and spinons, 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.
Orbitons can be thought of as energy stored in an orbital occupancy that can move throughout a material, in other words, an orbital-based excitation.
As a result, in order to move past each other in an extremely crowded environment, they are forced to modify their behavior.
Research published in July 2009 by the University of Cambridge and the University of Birmingham in England showed that electrons could jump from the surface of a metal onto a closely located quantum wire by quantum tunneling, and upon doing so, will separate into two quasiparticles, named spinons and holons by the researchers.
[5][6] The research states that firing a beam of X-ray photons at a single electron in a one-dimensional sample of strontium cuprate will excite the electron into a higher orbital, causing the beam to lose a fraction of its energy in the process before it rebounds.