Scientists create new kind of matter - compare it to light sabers.

[jonesy]

http://phys.org/news/2013-09-scientists-never-before-seen.html

Working with colleagues at the Harvard-MIT Center for Ultracold Atoms, a group led by Harvard Professor of Physics Mikhail Lukin and MIT Professor of Physics Vladan Vuletic have managed to coax photons into binding together to form molecules – a state of matter that, until recently, had been purely theoretical.

Photons have long been described as massless particles which don't interact with each other – shine two laser beams at each other, he said, and they simply pass through one another. "Photonic molecules," however, behave less like traditional lasers and more like something you might find in science fiction – the light saber.

The system could even be useful in classical computing, Lukin said, considering the power-dissipation challenges chip-makers now face. A number of companies – including IBM – have worked to develop systems that rely on optical routers that convert light signals into electrical signals, but those systems face their own hurdles.

Lukin also suggested that the system might one day even be used to create complex three-dimensional structures – such as crystals – wholly out of light.

Or maybe a laser sword?

[video=youtube;lWxnwSFpX-s]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWxnwSFpX-s[/video]

 

[Hand of Evil]

And I was impressed with Metallic Hydrogen

 

[Umbran]

Cute - if you can have your laser-sword fight in a near vacuum a few degrees above absolute zero

 

[jonesy]

Cute - if you can have your laser-sword fight in a near vacuum a few degrees above absolute zero

Hey, slow motion is cool. That's what Hollywood keeps saying.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Yay for new kinds of matter!

 

[Bullgrit]

Photons have long been described as massless particles which don't interact with each other – shine two laser beams at each other, he said, and they simply pass through one another.

I never knew this.

Bullgrit

 

[Umbran]

I never knew this.

It isn't precisely true, but it is a good approximation.

 

[freyar]

Cute - if you can have your laser-sword fight in a near vacuum a few degrees above absolute zero

You also have to be in a cloud of rubidium atoms.

Not sure what to think about this article or what the scientists have said in the press release. This is clearly a novel and extremely interesting experiment, but I'm just have a feeling it's being oversold a little. Just from reading this article, it looks like a photonic version of what happens in typical ("low critical temperature") superconductors, superfluids, or possibly Bose-Einstein condensates of certain kinds of atoms. (It's hard to tell what exactly without seeing the math.) And nonlinear effects, just not quite like this, have been known and used for a long time in a number of dielectric materials. So, anyway, I like the very cool result but get annoyed at this kind of spin.

 

[Umbran]

You also have to be in a cloud of rubidium atoms.

That's why it is a *near* vacuum

Just from reading this article, it looks like a photonic version of what happens in typical ("low critical temperature") superconductors, superfluids, or possibly Bose-Einstein condensates of certain kinds of atoms.

Yes, but it isn't like photons need to form a Bose-Einstein condensate to reach a superfluid or superconducting state. And any pseudo-bound state from photons is kind of interesting.

And nonlinear effects, just not quite like this, have been known and used for a long time in a number of dielectric materials.

Yeah, but there we are talking about particles with mass. I'd be interested in seeing if any mass-like terms creep up in the math, to be honest.

 

[freyar]

Yes, but it isn't like photons need to form a Bose-Einstein condensate to reach a superfluid or superconducting state. And any pseudo-bound state from photons is kind of interesting.

It's definitely interesting! That's why the article and quotes from the scientists involved are a bit frustrating. This should be cool enough on its own without overselling.

Yeah, but there we are talking about particles with mass. I'd be interested in seeing if any mass-like terms creep up in the math, to be honest.

Well, at that point, I was talking about photons in nonlinear dielectrics, where you can have 2 low-frequency photons combine into a single photon with double the frequency, etc (something else that can't happen in true vacuum). Anyway, I also wonder what the math for this looks like but just don't have the time to dig through it at the moment unfortunately.