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Making Light (More) Solid
quant-guru writes "Man's domination of light continues. New Scientist is running a story that highlights recent theoretical proposals for a photonic insulator, an engineered material that could make photons solidify. From the article: "OK, it wouldn't be a material in the everyday sense of the word, like a solid you could touch, but it could behave like one in some important ways...photons interacting in a quantum material could give us insights into how real materials with quantum properties work." One proposal by Greetree et al. (Nature Physics) (preprint) imagines a device that will allow many photons to interact with each other simultaneously in diamond, with phases reminiscent of real materials (from superfluid to insulating). This could lead to novel devices based on quantum phenomena, for quantum communication or quantum computers as examples. Similar proposals were made concurrently by two other groups: Angelakis et al. and Hartmann et al. (Nature Physics) (preprint). University of Cambridge physicist Charlie Tahan has more information and links (with step-by-step pictures) on his site."
This stuff gets so mindboggligly far from normal materials, a non-expert like me has absolutely no chance of understanding what this could be used for. One of the links mentioned exploring quantum phenomena that would otherwise be impossible to experiment with - would that be the main use for this, um, stuff?
Man's domination of light continues.
perhaps it's, "Man plays right into light's devious snare"