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New Form of Matter Melds Lasers, Superconductors
sterlingda writes "Physicists at the University of Pittsburgh have demonstrated a new form of matter that melds the characteristics of lasers and superconductors. The work introduces a new method of moving energy from one point to another as well as a low-energy means of producing a light beam like that from a laser. The new state is a solid filled with a collection of energy particles known as 'polaritons' that have been trapped and slowed using a technique similar to that used to produce a Bose-Einstein condensate. The work is published in the May 18 issue of Science (subscription required to read beyond the abstract)."
Again one step closer to that lightsaber. :)
Not trying to troll, but I really fear that all such experiments should be delayed until after humanity moved over to other planets so that any black hole accidents resulting from desire to get a Nobel Prize or just extra funding won't kill us all but only those involved in them.
Did they really demonstrate a new form of matter? What did we have at one time? Solid, liquid, gas, and plasma. We could have mixtures of the forms--like a suspension was a fine mixture of a liquid with a gas. I'm not seeing much in this article, though, which necessitates the material which they've created as being a new form of matter.
They've saturated a solid with a form of energy called "polaritons". Did anyone stop to think, oh, maybe fifteen years back, that maybe the conceptual m0del of a photon just needs a little brushing up? People thought that an atom was plum pudding at one time. We didn't end up with a million different atoms, atomitons, atomites, and gluoneoatomiquarks. Once the of the atom was refined well enough it has stayed, for the greatest part, the same atom.
I think the community should spend some time combining these polaritons, and fermions, and gluons, and quarks, and mesons, and bosons, all together with photons. It would probably make much of the math a lot simpler.
Granted, though, the headline news releases wouldn't be quite as dramatic. Physics isn't supposed to be caked with drama. That's what the rest of society is for. Let them keep it. Drama sucks.
the NPG electrode was replaced with carbon blac
Next up: New form of meta matter melds matter that melds Lasers, Superconductors
this looks like TV science to me, like a condensate of good wills against the evil inside every nature...
?
Somebody has to caution these guys to sound as little as possible like Star Trek lines from Geordie. I think the deflector dish was reconfigured (in minutes) to emit polaritons at least once. Also, my spell checker just flagged "polaritons" as not even being a word.
It didn't say in TFA - does anybody know how dense these polaritrons are in the superfluid? Being, apparently, energy efficient to create, I'm wondering if this would make a good energy storage device - something to run those electric cars, even. It's hard to conjecture without a clue about how tight they're packed in, though.
I'm also pleasantly surprised to read that Bell Labs is still doing basic science - urban legend was that went out with the AT&T breakup.
Oh, and if anybody from physorg.com is reading, there's a strange display thing going on where ", " is replaced by "-" (not even space emdash space) in many sentences, making clause boundries in the sentences appear awkwardly as pseudo-hyphenated words.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
A form of matter with the properties of a laser? Does that mean E=mc2 still holds or is this the form of matter that ghosts are made out, allowing a person's hand to pass through the matter when it's in a low energy state? Or _perhaps_ it was supposed to say something along the lines of "properties of substances that are used to generate lasers"?
the clock on the wall says 4 til 7
I'm wonder what the most promising practical applications of this new matter could be.
What are its constraints and limitations? How much energy-density or power-density can it handle?
Since lasers are being used in experimental development of confinement fusion, and since this polariton-filled matter is supposedly more energy efficient, I'd wonder if this new matter could be used to facilitate laser-confinement fusion.
Or is it just meant for low-power applications?
DVD-players, maybe?
in related news:
the team of scientists researching chronoton particles has not been heard from since last tuesday...
No need to be a jerk about it, though. Especially since the supersymmetric postulate seems to be almost, but not quite, as bad as string theory in terms of a lack of predictive power. For those offended by that comment - just tell me some test we could potentially perform that would invalidate the postulate. I confess that I don't have a detailed knowledge of supersymmetry yet, but I'm always struck by how every experimental test I've seen so far is just ruling out fractions of the model space.
I'm not sure about that Wikipedia quote, either. It seems, frankly, downright wrong. You might as well say that the distinction between a moebius strip and a plain loop is not quite clear when they symmetry properties make the distinction plain as day. With fermions you have a half-integer spin field and all that entails: anti-commuting operators/Grassman variables => the Pauli exclusion principle, 720 degree rotations are the identity (generally), a propagator that goes like 1/p, the conservation of the net number of fermions, and etc. With bosons you'll find: commuting operators/plain numbers => Bose-Einstein condensation, 360 degree rotations are the identity, a propagator that goes like 1/p^2, non-conservation of the net number of bosons, particles that are their own anti-particles, and etc.
From your first post it seems that you don't know the first thing about condensed matter physics, either. There's a proliferation of phases for a very good reason - because they're real. That phases are distinguished by different properties, whether a symmetry or not, a latent heat necessary to cross the phase transition boundary, and etc.
Think of it this way, even if we manage to find some underlying structure that melds fermions and bosons, they're still going to be as different as water and ice. So, even if we eventually unify fermions and bosons under a single umbrella, the distinction will still be useful; just like how chemists don't have to bother with neutrons and protons but instead use nuclei and their properties + electrons.
Frankly, I'd be surprised if you've made it as far as you claim in physics given that you seem to have a very rigid way of thinking about the world. That, or your the kind of @ss who gives the rest of us physicists a bad name.
I for one, am pleased to welcome our frickin' superconducting laser shark overlords.
Okay, I found this other article about this discovery, and thought it was pretty good. It's worth a read:
http://physicsweb.org/articles/news/11/5/17/1
So this thing is like a BEC, but it's made of "excitons" (electron-hole pairs) plus the photons causing the excitation. But these "polaritons" are so short-lived, I'm wondering what this invention could be practically used for. They're calling it a "quasi-equilibrium" system, because it's more of a dynamic equilibrium.
Could this "polariton condensate" be used to probe "quantum foam", or spacetime, or something? They've already said it's more energy efficient than a laser.
Surely something this exotic must be able to confer on us some useful ability, that it would have some practical application -- even if only for research purposes.
When I think of an exciton-photon combination as compared to electron inversion, then it reminds me of the difference between a turbine and a piston engine. This "polariton" thingy (exciton-photon combo) would be more efficient than the laser in a way that's analogous to how the turbine is more efficient than the piston explosion. I'd think that the key to maximizing its advantage is by stimulating the excitons with the highest energy photons possible. That way you're maximizing your energy savings from this more efficient process.
Hmm... so maybe it might be useful for laser-confinement fusion after all. Maybe it could be used for laser-based rapid-manufacturing, etc.
Whatever it is, you'd probably want it for a short-range application, due to the brief lifespan of the polaritons.
You seem to be under the impression that bosons = waves and fermions = particles. Wrong wrong wrong!
According to the Standard Model and Quantum Field Theory, both bosons and fermions are quantized (ie particle like) waves that propagate through fields that have completely different symmetry properties and point-like interactions with each-other and sometimes themselves.
Here's you're clue-stick: matter = fermions because of the Pauli exclusion principle. That is, the waves crowd each other out completely so you get Fermi-Dirac statistics and all the other properties you normally associate with matter. Bosons = what we classically identified as fields and waves because they can pile up in to the same state and are not conserved in number. The distinction between them is as plain as day.
Fermions spin? Half integer. Bosons spin? Full integer. Arguing about quantum physics on /.? Priceless.
Godless heathen.
What exactlty does "form" mean?
does form follow function?
If we all understood exactly what every word means maybe we could communicate?
Is a form like a state (liquid, gas, solid, etc...),
or is it an arrangement of sub atomic particles with inverted spin state?
Obviously I understand how everything works, but I am not sure I understand how others think everything works when they try to relay how they think everything works?
Mung
Here's another good article I found:
http://optics.org/cws/article/research/27439
Again, a more energy-efficient laser sounds like it could be used for nuclear fusion, or even just for more energy efficient consumer electronics (eg. DVD players)
Isn't Laser-TV supposed to be coming out this Xmas? I'd read that Novalux is working on improving the power of their Necsel laser modules for that purpose. If polariton lasers are 10 times more efficient than laser diodes and can operate at room temp, then maybe they'd fill the bill.
Some editor needs to learn the difference between a hyphen and an em-dash (unless Firefox isn't displaying them properly). The first sentence of paragraph three, as it stands, simultaneously suggests that a nanometer is thick and that the Metal Gear team somehow assisted the project.
... c'mon... "solid-Snoke"?
>> Standing on head makes smile of frown, but rest of face also upside down.
Hi, I want to explain something here. This thing produces normal lasers, that are the same as the lasers we already know and love. The difference is that it can produce them using much less power input. The traditional method of electron population inversion requires more energy input for the amount of laser beam you get out. This new polariton method can make the same amount of laser for less energy inputted.
For laser-confinement fusion, you'd want that kind of energy savings.
Or SDI, or that ballistic missile interception laser mounted on that Boeing aircraft.
I'm even wondering if those desktop particle accelerators based on laser-wakefield effect wouldn't also benefit.
Anything that requires a high-power laser beam could benefit from this new polariton laser method. A turbine is already going round and round like a polariton, and is distinct from the discrete reciprocating motion of a piston, or the population inversion of electrons.
The fact that you question whether it's a new state of matter, and you refer merely solid, liquid, gas, and plasma without any reference to phase transitions, really shows your limited understanding of this subject.
"State of matter" doesn't really have a strict definition in terms of phase transitions: most phase transitions don't give rise to new states of matter, and one state of matter may be transformed into another one without a phase transition (as you yourself observe).
Important as this result may be, it does not seem to meet the criteria for a "new state of matter". In fact, the objects in which these interactions take place seem to be simply in the solid state, and the objects (polaritons) composing the new state are not made of matter. So, you have a new state, and it's a state that exists inside a solid object, but it's not a "new state of matter".
Okay, I know -- here's a good application:
http://www.mcp-group.com/rpt/rpttslm.html
Selective Laser Melting. It's a relatively new rapid prototyping technology which uses laser beams to melt powdered metal or plastic, so that it can be formed layer-by-layer into 3D parts.
So this would be an example of what this polariton laser would be good for, because the polaritons can generate the laser much more efficiently than conventional electron population inversion. Your power requirements would be reduced by 90%, and possibly even more.
How does it taste?
Refreshingly minty?
Did they achieve these "polaritons" by reversing the phase array on the main deflector dish? (Well, OK, just so long as they don't try crossing the streams...)
They say the first thing to go is your penis. Well, it's either that or your brain. I forget which...
Good luck combining fermions with photons. Photons are very much a type of boson, which means they're very much _not_ fermions.
Photon: Integer spin: Boson.
Electron: Half-integer spin: Fermion.
Hole: Half-integer spin: Fermion.
Electron-hole pair: Sum of two half-integer spins = integer spin: Boson.
So an electron-hole PAIR and a photon of the excitation energy hanging around in a crystal full of electrons can be duals - "flipping back-and-forth" or forming a quantum-indeterminancy of which it "really is" - i.e. a "polariton".
And as a fine boson it doesn't give a hoot for the exclusion principle and actually prefers to be in step with its neighbors.
So successfully creating a suitable nanoscale structure to cause a bunch of them to form, then to combine into a bose-einstein condensate, seems like a reasonable accomplishment.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
A 'state of matter' is typically regarded as having different macroscopic properties brought about by a phase transition.
Typically (i.e., to most people), a "state of matter" is regarded to be what people learn in school to be a state of matter: solid, liquid, gas, and sometimes plasma. That definition is what counts in a press release to the general public. If a press release talks about a "new state of matter", it implies that something has been added to that list, or at least obviously belongs on that list.
When communicating with the public, it's the responsibility of scientists to use the commonly understood meaning of terms. That's not "philosophical" or "linguistic" minutiae, it's a question of clear and honest communication.
Of course ice/water is a great example, but superconductor/metal in aluminum is another example as well. If you really don't agree with this, then you'd consider gas and plasma to be the same state of matter (a point that the original poster disagrees since (s)he specifically mentioned gas/plasma being distinct states).
It's not obvious at all to me that the gas/plasma distinction is comparable to the superconductor/metal distinction. I think there are many reasonable definitions of "state of matter" that would distinguish gas/plasma, but consider superconductor/metal to be the same state of matter.
However, there probably should be a few more "states of matter" included in the standard list: neutron matter and superfluids, for example.