Physicists have created a solid light

A group of researchers from Princeton University began to carry out very interesting experiments with light. But instead of watching his incredible speed, the scientists decided to stop, freezing the light in the crystal. And the question now is not about what scientists put the light in the crystal, the scientists soon created a crystal of light.

Process this they did the following: sent particles of light (photons) at a single point and instantly froze them. This has never been done, and therefore, the idea of researchers may be the starting point for creating new exotic materials with amazing and perhaps even strange properties.

For their study, the researchers first created a structure of superconductive materials that contains 100 billion atoms of which they are made to behave like artificial. Then the researchers put the artificial atoms near the superconductive wire containing photons. According to the laws of quantum mechanics, the photons in the wire has absorbed some of the properties of nearby atoms. And although the photons directly among themselves do not interact, in this case those are almost related to each other and began to behave as particles.

Darius Sadri, one of the researchers who participated in the experiment, tells how this became possible:

"We used the method of mixing of atoms and photons to push the photon to the interaction among themselves. The result of this collaboration was the emergence of a completely new collective behavior for light, akin to the phases of matter, like liquids and crystals, which are studied in physics of condensed matter".

As a result, scientists got a kind of solid light, where the photons in space are frozen. The obtained crystals is very small, but scientists hope that the system, like the most common crystals will start to grow and eventually they will be able to create new and interesting materials like supergalactic or insulating materials composed entirely of light. However, it should be noted that scientists have not yet come up with possible ways to use them. published

Source: hi-news.ru