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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.
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)
Good luck combining fermions with photons. Photons are very much a type of boson, which means they're very much _not_ fermions. Perhaps the biologists should just combine mitochondria and chromosomes too, you know, to simplify the math?
This business with polaritons in semiconductors sounds a lot like the way phonons in crystal lattices work.
A phonon is a sort of derived particle. It isn't a fundamental particle in itself but it represents a quantized mode of vibration in a lattice of more fundamental particles. But as a quasiparticle it exhibits the same types of behavior as other particles subject to quantum mechanics.
Their classical analogue would be standing waves in a crystal lattice. These lose part of their classical wave-like character and become more particle-like when the vibrational energy in the crystal decreases to near zero. The vibrational energy at extremely low temperatures takes the form of a few phonons bouncing around in the crystal like free particles in a hollow box. Phonons are ultimately responsible for all conduction of sound and heat through solids.
A polariton is apparently the coupling of a photon with one of these, and they're claiming to have gotten interesting collective behavior. I'm not sure if this is a "new state of matter" but we may get some cool toys out of it.
This is really one of the most ignorant posts I've seen.
The community "should spend some time" combining photons, fermions, gluons etc. because "it would probably make much of the math a lot simpler."
Ever heard of string theory? The community has been spending an ENORMOUS amount of time trying to combine this things into a common picture. And trust me - it doesn't make the math simpler. Just ask Ed Witten.
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
You want "polaritons, and fermions, and gluons, and quarks, and mesons, and bosons, all together with photons". Tell you what, I'll get right on that. After all, it's only a matter of coming up with a Grand Unified Theory, and how hard could that possibly be? Why hasn't anyone taken this simple step yet? How could we, the physics community, have overlooked such an obvious solution to the problem of proliferating subatomic particles?
It's such an easy way to win a Nobel Prize and have my name right up there with Einstein and Newton and Dirac.
Evil will always win, because Good is DUMB
Perhaps the OP's sig calling for legalizing pot can shed some light...
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
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.
Over the last ten years I've watched the news releases about physics--and it seems that physics is wh0ring itself out just for news headlines.
Perhaps you should actually read the scientific journal articles if you're serious about this, instead of reading the popular reviews which are by definition "dumbed down" such that non-PhD's can understand in layman's terms what is going on.
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.
Did you actually read the JOURNAL article, or are you just extrapolating bullshit based on a popular science review of the actual journal article? If you actually didn't think physicists were 'whoring themselves out' your post would make you look significantly less ignorant.
You quote liquids and gases as being two distinct forms of matter, yet they're actually the same if you look on a phase-diagram plot. So why do you list them as being two separate phases?
Oh wait, that's right, you can go CONTINUOUSLY from liquid to gas, without any phase transition, along a proper thermodynamic trajectory of course! What makes them look like separate states of matter is whether you have a phase transition as you alter the system. And the phase-transition line (in pressure-temperature space) actually ends in a critical point (see here , such that you can choose a proper p-T trajectory either WITH or WITHOUT the phase transition.
Would you call a superconductor a new state of matter? It certainly is quite different from the metallic state, with a well-defined phase transition as you cool below Tc. What about a Bose-Einstein Condensate? What about a phase-transition from superconducting-like nature to BEC? These have all been well studied, and all are acknowledged as states of matter.
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. And that makes it all the more humorous that you actually go on to claim physicists are whoring themselves out.
make world, not war
Sheesh, you're spewing out pseudoscientific mumbo-jumbo like a half-baked Star Trek dialog, and complaining when someone calls you on your BS.
You're telling me that fermions are not subatomic bundles of energy?
Subatomic? Bundle of energy? What the hell are you talking about? The ONLY property that defines whether a 'particle' is a fermion or not is whether it has half-integer spin. And the word 'particle' really refers to is a quantization, which can be any quantized excitation, doesn't mean subatomic.
Then applying the rules of Quantum Electrodynamics, a particle with well-defined half-integer spin must be anti-symmetric upon particle exchange, which leads to things like Fermi-Dirac statistics, the Pauli exclusion principle which is what makes atomic states look the way they are, etc.
make world, not war
Or, then again, maybe they won't find that new particles fit neatly with what has been established. Theoretical physicists have been trying to unify everything for the last 150 years - the current popular attempt is called string theory. It's not doing so well in the realm of "making useful or even testable predictions," though.
Ewige Blumenkraft.
Fermions spin? Half integer. Bosons spin? Full integer. Arguing about quantum physics on /.? Priceless.
Godless heathen.
Maybe quantum mechanics invites bipolar trolls. If someone claims a wave, they can argue a particle. If someone claims a particle, they can argue a wave. If some claims duality then they can argue ambiguity.
You're totally confusing spin with particle/wave duality, which makes one really wonder what the hell you are talking about. You may be impressing the moderators with your blatantly-incorrect usage of fancy techie-sounding words, but it's quite obvious to the physicists here that you have no clue what you're talking about. And the irony is that you're guilty of that 'whoring out' which you are accusing actual physicists of.
Your original quote misconstrued the nature of fermionic vs bosonic natures of quanta, which the GP clarified, and you resorted to a wikipedia quote, which is quite out of context.
Irrespective of particle-wave nature, photons are spin-1 bosons! Why the hell are you bringing particle/wave duality into the picture at all?
All I suggested is that, rather than pronouncing new unprecedented discoveries every month, maybe the physicists ought to look into solidifying their dual wave-particle of photons. They'll find that all these other "new particles" and "new forms of matter" fit neatly with a which has been established for at least fifteen years.
If you had an inkling of the physics research, including theoretical, simulational, and experimental, that goes on in "highly-correlated" condensed-matter systems, you'd understand that the framework for identifying the various quanta and behaviors are well-defined within the basic "standard model" for realizable laboratory conditions. And this has been well-understood for longer than 15 years, what exactly is this 15-year time frame you're quoting anyway?
What is interesting is how modern 'exotic' materials can exhibit quanta with different charge, spin, phonon, etc properties than 'plain vanilla' systems. See spin-charge separation in a Luttinger Liquid for an older example. Armchair scientists like you may prefer to use the recent buzzword of emergent behavior if you like, although I don't agree Laughlin's mindview on the whole field of emergence.
make world, not war
Guys, "Homeless" here *does not know what he is talking about*. Please stop modding him up. Both fermions and bosons are quantum fields (i.e. wave or particles but neither really), but their properties are vastly different for reasons that a real physicist IS taught in 1st year undergrad - The difference between spin odd-integer/2 and spin integer fields is vitally important and fundamental to physics. The ONLY KNOWN WAY to transform bosons into fermions at a fundamental level (as opposed to by mere aggregation - obviously even numbers of fermions together can act as pseudobosons, or by dimensional reduction - as in the weird fractional quantum hall effect that affects quantum systems confined to 2D) is via a "supersymmetry transformation", a so-far-only-theoretical construct.
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.
"Once past the range of a whole atom then everything truly is just a particle, with a waveform, which carries energy."
Out of curiosity, when you say things like that do you actually expect to be taken seriously by scientists here?
make world, not war
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.
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.
A 'state of matter' is typically regarded as having different macroscopic properties brought about by a phase transition. 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).
However, regarding the 'state' itself, it refers to the collective excitations being considered. Ie, one has an an electron 'gas' inside a 'solid' block of copper. The copper atoms (minus the conduction electrons) act as a solid regarding phonon behavior (and why that block of copper moves like a solid when you tap it but doesn't flow like liquid). Meanwhile the free conduction electrons inside that block act as a Fermi gas (more accurately as a Fermi liquid if you want to properly account for interactions).
Human physiology makes us more aware of the phonic nature of stuff, like whether it's a solid (has long-range interactions), liquid (short-range interactions), or gas (weakly interacting). But there ARE distinctive states due to electronic charge interactions (superconductor/metal/insulator) or magnetic interactions (ferromagnet/anti-ferrogmagnet), etc.
If you really want to break it down, the point you're trying to argue is that "state of matter" should refer ONLY to the phononic behavior, and entirely ignore electronic and magnetic behaviors. At this point the debate becomes only a useless argument over philosophical and linguistic minutae.
make world, not war