For the First Time, Light Transformed into “Super Lido”

For the first time, strange solids that can flow like liquids were created from light. Studying it will help researchers to better understand the exotic quantum state of matter.

“We actually made light on a solid. It's pretty amazing.” dimitris trypogeorgos At the National Research Council of Italy (CNR). He points out Daniele SanvittCNR also showed how light becomes a fluid over a decade ago. Now, Trypogeorgos, Sanvitto and colleagues use light to create quantum “superlides” that are not just robust.

Supercrissilicon has a simultaneously zero viscosity and has a crystalline-like structure similar to the arrangement of atoms in salt crystals. None of these strange materials correspond to outside the quantum domain. For this reason, they were previously only created in experiments with atoms cooled to very low temperatures.

However, in this experiment, the researchers replaced the supercold atoms with superconducting aluminum gallium arcenide and lasers.

They illuminated the laser on small sections of the semiconductor with narrow ridge patterns. The complex interaction between light and material ultimately formed a type of hybrid particle called polaritons. The ridge pattern constrained how these “quasiparticles” could move, and what energy could the polytons have in such a way as to form a superlide.

Sanvitto says the team had to measure the sufficient properties of this trapped and converted light very accurately and prove it was a solid and fluid with no viscosity. This was a challenge, he says, as scientists have never previously created and evaluated superspores made from light experimentally before.

The new experiments say it contribute to a general understanding of how quantum matter can change states by undergoing topological transitions. Alberto Bramati At the Sorbonne University in France. The team clearly demonstrated that they made a superlido, but he says more measurements need to be made to understand its properties.

According to Trypogeorgos, light-based superlides may be easier to manipulate than those previously created with atoms.

“We're really at the beginning of something new,” he says.