Researchers turn light into ‘supersolid’ that flows like a fluid

Researchers in Italy have achieved a milestone by creating a special type of solid from light for the first time. The new solid, called ‘supersolid, flows like a fluid and will help researchers better understand exotic quantum states of matter.

Researcher Daniele Sanvitto of Italy’s National Research Council (CNR) had shown more than a decade ago how light could become a fluid. However, with the recent achievement, Sanvitto and his colleagues have used light to make a quantum ‘supersolid’.

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What is a ‘supersolid’?

According to the University of Stuttgart, a supersolid is a state of matter that is both solid and liquid at the same time. According to a research, if matter is cooled to extremely low temperatures, quantum effects can enable states of matter other than the three we know – solid, liquid and gas.

Supersolids simultaneously have zero viscosity, which is a measure of how easily a liquid flows, and a crystal-like structure akin to the arrangement of atoms in salt crystals.

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How did light turn into a supersolid?

Instead of using atoms cooled to extremely low temperatures, researchers used semiconductor aluminum gallium arsenide and a laser.

They directed the laser onto a small piece of the semiconductor that had a pattern of narrow ridges. Complex interactions between the light and the material eventually formed a type of hybrid particle called a polariton. The ridge pattern constrained how these “quasiparticles” could move and what energies they could have in such a way that the polaritons formed a supersolid.

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The researchers then precisely measures properties of the trapped and transformed light to prove it was both a solid and a fluid with no viscosity.

Light-based supersolids may be easier to manipulate than those previously created with atoms, the researchers said. “We are really at the beginning of something new,” they added.