Researchers Working On Crystallizing Light

An anonymous reader writes Researchers at Princeton University have begun crystallizing light as part of an effort to answer fundamental questions about the physics of matter. The researchers are not shining light through crystal – they are transforming light into crystal. As part of an effort to develop exotic materials such as room-temperature superconductors, the researchers have locked together photons, the basic element of light, so that they become fixed in place. "It's something that we have never seen before," said Andrew Houck, one of the researchers. "This is a new behavior for light."

Comments

kind of reminds me,...

[Selur]

of the power cubes from the old transformer series *gig*

Re:kind of reminds me,...

[Anonymous Coward]

Energon cubes.

Been able to buy this for Years

[Anonymous Coward]

Just go to the local grocery & get some "Crystal Light" tastes pretty good too.

Re:Been able to buy this for Years

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder if this new kind causes explosive crap-fits also.

Re:Been able to buy this for Years

[Anonymous Coward]

Beat me to it. Well done.

Holodeck!

[Anonymous Coward]

Holograms and lightsabers by 2025. (Flying cars by 2026).

Re:Holodeck!

[bobbied]

Holograms and lightsabers by 2025. (Flying cars by 2026).

Linux on the desktop this year!

Re: Holodeck!

[Anonymous Coward]

I just realized that with the possibility of Linux desktops and phones becoming a reality the sudden surge in popularity of the neckbeard went largely unnoticed.

Coincidence?

Re:Holodeck!

[Anonymous Coward]

Holograms and lightsabers by 2025. (Flying cars by 2026).

Linux on the desktop this year!

Duke Nukem Forever is old!

Re: Holodeck!

[beastofburdon]

No it didn't, we call them hipsters. Along with sudo Linux(Android) we got sudo nerds.

Finally!!

[Anonymous Coward]

I can now run faster than light! :)

Re:Finally!!

[UnknownSoldier]

Considering light was slowed down to zero a few years back, you are now just catching up to it? :)

Re:Finally!!

[Half-pint HAL]

Considering light was slowed down to zero a few years back, you are now just catching up to it? :)

Well given it had a 10 millisecond headstart, he'll be catching up for a fair wee while....

Re:Finally!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Already considered that.

Since Einsteins famous equation Energy = Mass times the velocity of the speed of light squared, what happens to the energy as light is slowed down and translated to mass, and the speed of light reduces to zero? Would that become zero point energy?

What happens when that mass returns to zero as the crystaline latice breaks down and the light escapes to return to normal light speed? Energy drawn from the vacuum left behind? Photonic super cooling as millions of calories of heat energy are drawn away to accelerate the photons mass to zero?

Let's not build up too large a crystal so we don't find out that it was indeed the first photon bomb.

Re:Finally!!

[Salgat]

Honestly, I'm just getting sick of going to Slashdot comments and seeing the top posts all being jokes instead of insightful and interesting discussions. On this submission alone I see 3 of the top 5 posts are just jokes; white noise that I have to sift through to find actual information.

Re:Finally!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, really. The first comment is basically, "LIKE TRANSFORMERS LOL" and then a bunch of similarly insightful comments to scroll past follow it.

Things come to mind

[Anonymous Coward]

How many photons can you store in a cubic cm? Could you then release those photons on demand? How much energy could you store in this sort of a system? Can you use it as a battery? Could it be weaponized? Imma charging mah lazers?

Re:Things come to mind

[fahrbot-bot]

How many photons can you store in a cubic cm? Could you then release those photons on demand? How much energy could you store in this sort of a system? Can you use it as a battery? Could it be weaponized?

The British already did this in 1854 - duh. There were even poems about it.

Re:Things come to mind

[Bob the Super Hamste]

My best guess would be yes you could use it as a battery and it would almost certainly be weaponized. As for how much energy could be stored my guess would be it would be the Planck Energy * (1cm^3 / Planck Volume) and I don't really feel like doing that calculation but it looks like it would be a lot given that the Planck Energy is about equal to the energy in an average car's tank of fuel and the Planck Volume is really small ~4^-104 m^3.

Pending lawsuit...

[Oarsman]

Crystal Light is going to sue for trademark infringement. #obligatorypun

Re:Pending lawsuit...

[Khyber]

Pepsi might sue. I don't think Crystal Light is going to do much of anything!

Frozen in an excited state. -- That's impossible!

[Myself]

(obligatory Real Genius line.)

Sounds familiar

[HangingChad]

Sounds like someone figured out the basis for the holodeck on the Enterprise.

Re:Sounds familiar

[kheldan]

Except that in NextGen Star Trek (24th century and later), the holodeck uses photons restrained by force fields, totally different technology than what they're experimenting with here (I think).

Re:Sounds familiar

[omnichad]

How do photons restrained by force fields make it to someone's eye?

Re:Sounds familiar

[kheldan]

How the hell should I know? There's a reason it's called science fantasy after all. How do you generate a coherent graviton beam? What's the operating principles of a Heisenberg Compensator?

Re:Sounds familiar

[Zalbik]

What's the operating principles of a Heisenberg Compensator?

Easy: "I'm not in the meth business. I'm in the empire business."

I may be confusing Heisenberg's though.

Re:Sounds familiar

[RavenLrD20k]

Ok... Just for Hypothetical plausibility: They don't. The photons restrained by force fields create the matter from "nothing". Unrestrained photons that bounce off the restrained ones are what make it to someone's eye to give the person the vision of the environment simulated around them. Again, not saying this is the official explanation... just a plausible one.

Re:Sounds familiar

[Half-pint HAL]

Maybe it's the photons that bounce off the photons that you see? And maybe the force-field is there to stop those photons getting knocked out of place by every stray photon? Or maybe the Star Trek series is just cheap pulp that doesn't deserve the huge cult-like following it has....

Re:Sounds familiar

[Anonymous Coward]

Restrained, not contained. Perhaps there's an allowed amount of leakage, the force field providing the objects shape.

Re:Sounds familiar

[Kevin Fishburne]

I'm guessing the force fields are what allow a hologram to punch you in the face and the photons are what allow you to see the fist coming at you. They're probably generated separately and synchronized for realism. They never really explain in detail how holographic projections work in Star Trek, other than "photons and force fields" and "holoprojectors", which have a limited range and need to be placed strategically (the strategy isn't explained, either). The worst sin of course is how they fail to adequately explain how two people can get farther apart from each other than the diameter of the holodeck/suite, and yet in Voyager talk about expanding the size of the holodeck to accommodate larger simulations. I suppose it's no surprise that the most "holy shit this is awesome" piece of technology in Star Trek is the most difficult to rationally explain.

Re:Sounds familiar

[Anonymous Coward]

I have not over-thought a Star Trek plot in many a year but the answer to the holodeck diameter issue seems pretty simple. If the two people are moving into places out of view, each one has a section of the room to themselves, like a split-screen video game. if they move toward the edge of the room the simulation could just move under them like a treadmill. if they are over-distant but also visible (half a mile apart on an open field or something) the projector could virtualize the view from each side (a flat transparent wall between the two parties with a fake visual facing each side) until they get close enough in game-space to cancel the effect.

Re:Sounds familiar

[Anonymous Coward]

Or were you thinking about the Infinite Improbability Drive? (yes, I shifted gears, literally)

Re:Sounds familiar

[Anonymous Coward]

Or maybe the Star Trek series is just cheap pulp that doesn't deserve the huge cult-like following it has....

Heresy I say, Heresy, please turn yourself in to your local disintegration chamber.

Re:Sounds familiar

[Kevin Fishburne]

That is an excellent solution to the proximity problem. They'd also have to use inertial dampeners to simulate the effect of movement when not actually moving (the opposite of what they normally do) and variable gravity plating. I wonder if the holodeck can localize pressure and humidity, or if it's just the entire room. If the safeties were turned off and there was a serious hull breach in one of two shuttlepods how would the holoprojection or deck mechanics depressurize only one of the participants? Perhaps the safeties only pertain to force field injuries and more difficult properties are performed globally. Localizing scent, for example, would be difficult without hiding little scent dispensers. There was a Voyager episode (the one where the holodecks were expanded to encompass multiple decks) where a holodeck-generated explosion actually blew out other parts of the ship. The holodeck concept is awesome and fun to talk about.

Re:Sounds familiar

[Half-pint HAL]

Quoting what is presumably a Star Trek reference at someone who thinks Star Trek is cheap pulp fiction doesn't discourage the idea that Star Trek fans are cult-like....

Hard Light Bridges

[Anonymous Coward]

And coming soon: Excursion funnels!

Re:Hard Light Bridges

[jep77]

I read that as Excursion Funerals. Twice. It really sounds like a good idea though. I have to update my will now.

Re:Hard Light Bridges

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

I read that as Excursion Funerals. Twice. It really sounds like a good idea though. I have to update my will now.

"Excretion Funerals" here.

Same disease, smells worse...

Discworld

[volvox_voxel]

This sound like something out of one of Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels..

The Switch

[chinton]

We've secretly replaced their regular coffee with light crystals... Let's see if they notice.

Sounds like technobabble

[Russ1642]

It sounds like one of those articles scientists put in journals to discredit their peer review process. They make up a bunch of crap that sounds all sciency and then laugh when it gets published.

Re:Sounds like technobabble

[Anonymous Coward]

It sounds like one of those articles scientists put in journals to discredit their peer review process. They make up a bunch of crap that sounds all sciency and then laugh when it gets published.

Science news articles are always babble. The actually paper doesn't mention crystals or crystallization anywhere.

Re:Sounds like technobabble

[Anonymous Coward]

"Besides Houck, Türeci, Sadri and Raftery, the research team included Sebastian Schmidt, a senior researcher at the Institute for Theoretical Physics at ETH Zurich, Switzerland. Support for the project was provided by: the Eric and Wendy Schmidt Transformative Technology Fund; the National Science Foundation; the David and Lucile Packard Foundation; the U.S. Army Research Office; and the Swiss National Science Foundation."

Re:Sounds like technobabble

[dkman]

I agree.

From the article:

To build their machine, the researchers created a structure made of superconducting materials that contains 100 billion atoms engineered to act as a single “artificial atom.” They placed the artificial atom close to a superconducting wire containing photons. By the rules of quantum mechanics, the photons on the wire inherit some of the properties of the artificial atom – in a sense linking them.

They use a lot of "artificially" in the article. And I like the big jump of "By the rules of quantum mechanics".

LIGHT SABRE

[Anonymous Coward]

That's right, here comes my Light Sabre

Things come to mind

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes

The power of bad reporting

[gurps_npc]

If you read the article, the scientists are not converting energy into matter.

Instead, they have caused some photons to be entangled so that they gain some of the properties of "liquid or solids". Not all the properties, not even the properties of a crystal, instead some of the properties of 'liquid or solid"

This article is just about one of the worst dumming down of science I have read. It was built up to sound 'click worthy', mainly be ignoring the actual research. They don't even use the word "entangled".

Re:The power of bad reporting

[neoritter]

Well of course they didn't, I don't think their research had anything to do with Disney.

Re:The power of bad reporting

[Anonymous Coward]

You might want to look into the uncommon quantum effect "RTFA"

One of these odd properties is called âoeentanglementâ in which multiple particles become linked and can affect each other over long distances

Re:The power of bad reporting

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, yes, by its nature popular science publications do 'dumb things down' so people like me can understand. Here's the paper's abstract. I'd rather read this article:

"Here, we report the experimental observation of a dynamical quantum phase transition in a strongly interacting open photonic system. The system studied, comprising a Jaynes-Cummings dimer realized on a superconducting circuit platform, exhibits a dissipation-driven localization transition. Signatures of the transition in the homodyne signal and photon number reveal this transition to be from a regime of classical oscillations into a macroscopically self-trapped state manifesting revivals, a fundamentally quantum phenomenon. This experiment also demonstrates a small-scale realization of a new class of quantum simulator, whose well-controlled coherent and dissipative dynamics is suited to the study of quantum many-body phenomena out of equilibrium."

Re:The power of bad reporting

[tsa]

Indeed it was so bad that I stopped reading halfway. The person who wrote this clearly didn't get anything of what the scientists are trying to do in this project.

Re:The power of bad reporting

[EmagGeek]

Lighten up, Francis. This is Slashdot. Nobody expects good journalism or even semi-accurate plagiarism here.

Red Dwarf reference too..

[afaiktoit]

The solid light projectors

Re:Red Dwarf reference too..

[wonkey_monkey]

Close, but I think it was "hard light."

Re:Red Dwarf reference too..

[afaiktoit]

yeah, something like that

Obligatory Linda Carter reference

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe in Crystal Light because I believe in me!

Marvel did it first! DAZZLER!

[ClioCJS]

Isn't this Dazzler's powers from X-Men/80's days? She could turn light into a hard object. Basically this.

Re:Marvel did it first! DAZZLER!

[Chris Mattern]

But hopefully without the disco this time.

Re:Marvel did it first! DAZZLER!

[Anonymous Coward]

She could turn light into a hard object.

It was the leotard. I have a thing for women in those, I can't help it.

This article makes no sense whatsoever

[MobyDisk]

This article makes no sense. It talks about "crystallizing" light but never says what it means. Then it goes into quantum computers. In the middle, it links to a journals.aps.org article that doesn't even contain the word "crystal" in it. All the quotes are vague things like "It’s something that we have never seen before" which doesn't help either.

I thought the Slashdot comments might help, but they are all just jokes. So I take it no one else understands what this article is about either.

Re:This article makes no sense whatsoever

[Anonymous Coward]

My guess would be they used the term crystal because if you could link together enough photons you would get a lattice of photons as you get a lattice of atoms in a crystal. I wonder if this would make for a much more powerful laser as you wouldn't have to waste a bunch of energy to get all the photons in alignment?

Re:This article makes no sense whatsoever

[Anonymous Coward]

it's a science news blog. were you expecting more than the abstract and a commentary?
go here:
http://journals.aps.org/prx/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevX.4.031043

Re:This article makes no sense whatsoever

[Anonymous Coward]

It's bad reporting.

This has been in the news a while back, and was dubbed "photonic crystals" then too (but that term was already in use for something completely different).

Basically, you start with a quantum mechanical system (usually a bunch of atoms) that has very few degrees of freedom (some kind of potential trap). This is the "crystal" part.

Then you add a number of photons to that system. The photons couple with the electrons in the lattice. Because of the restricted degrees of freedom, only very few interactions are possible. When a photon interacts with the lattice, this adds even more restrictions on the system, in such a way that a second interacting photon will feel the effect of the first.

So one photon interacts with the lattice, and the lattice interacts in turn with a second photon. Because of the restricted degrees of freedom, it will appear as if the first photon directly interacts with the second.

That's the basis. It seems they expanded on this, and created more complex pseudo photon-photon interactions, with more photons.

Re:This article makes no sense whatsoever

[radtea]

So I take it no one else understands what this article is about either.

In fairness to the writer of the simply hideous article, which is an amazing compendium of misleading nonsense, irrelevancy and outright falsehood, the research team seem to be speaking in a private language. Even their "popular summary" is difficult for a physicist who has done some work in quantum fundamentals to understand.

It appears they have created a fairly standard state in which microwave photons are strongly interacting with each other via a superconductor. Their is for some reason they do not explain and seem to take for granted, a phase transition in the system's behaviour as the number of photons drops.

This may (or may not) be related to the "phase/photon-number uncertainty principle", which is analogous to the usual position/momentum uncertainty principle: you can know the precise classical phase of a many-photon beam or you can know the number of photons in it, but not both at the same time. As the total number of photons goes down the uncertainty in the the number of photons goes down, increasing the uncertainty in the phase (that's one fairly hand-waving way to think about it, at least.)

After the phase transition the system is in some weird quantum state that they liken to Schrodinger's cat, but since Schrodinger's cat is in a perfectly ordinary quantum superposition that knowledge adds exactly nothing to our understanding of what the state actually is. Presumably they are referring to some particular state that is currently well-known within quantum information theory, but by presenting the idea to a lay audience without elaboration they simply add to the overall sense of confusion and, uh, incoherence.

Re:This article makes no sense whatsoever

[bill_mcgonigle]

In fairness to the writer of the simply hideous article, which is an amazing compendium of misleading nonsense, irrelevancy and outright falsehood, the research team seem to be speaking in a private language.

No kidding ... I was thinking as I was reading it, "wow, this is the worst-written paper I've read in a long time". They seem to go to lengths to make it as baroque, dense, and devoid of semantically (if not syntactically) valid prose as possible.

I don't just mean that it's very technical - they seem to be engaged in active denial of communication. I spent a little time teasing apart the sections I was most interested in, but that's the opposite of the job of a paper.

I know the stereotype is that "nerds can't write" but really many of the best papers in physics are also fun to read.

photons are not particles

[globaljustin]

we barely can define a photon: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P...

it exhibits "wave/particle duality"...it's not like a super-ball that's bouncing around a room...it's not matter...so how could these researchers possibly say that something that has no resting mass can be 'frozen in place'...

it's a wave...you can't "freeze" a wave...you freeze **the ocean**

Re:photons are not particles

[Nemyst]

We can define a photon just fine thank you. It's not because it doesn't fit in a human-scale model of comprehension that there's something inherently fuzzy or mysterious about the wave/particle duality. A photon is both a wave and a particle, exhibiting the properties of the former in certain scenarii and the latter in other scenarii.

Your analogy is also incorrect. A photon is an electromagnetic wave, it's not a vibration propagating through a medium. An ocean wave without the ocean is nothing, it's energy being transmitted through movement of the medium (same as sound). A photon can exist in a vacuum.

Re:photons are not particles

[Anonymous Coward]

...it's not like a super-ball that's bouncing around a room...

Damn straight. There's nothing like the Happy Fun Ball!

Re:photons are not particles

[Em Adespoton]

Actually, what I found intriguing about the article is that photons' "physical" properties appear to be relational, which goes a long way to explaining how they can behave as waves AND particles. It kind of seems like photons are really the relationship between the physical universe and the Higgs field, and are very much quantum. As such, photons are trainable based on what they interact with, and how they are measured. This has interesting ramifications for future modeling and even future means of photon measurement. Add this to the state change ability discovered a few months back, and our toolkit for understanding the universe has suddenly got a LOT more interesting.

Re:photons are not particles

[Anonymous Coward]

Particles don't exist in any sort of real sense. Things that look a lot like particles can exist, usually for a short time, sometimes longer. It would be a lot more accurate to talk about photons being the relationship between the electromagnetic field and the "physical universe". I think you should read more and speculate less. Maybe start with the wikipedia article on gauge bosons.

Re:photons are not particles

[Anonymous Coward]

so how could these researchers possibly say that something that has no resting mass can be 'frozen in place'...

It is a bit odd to use the phrase "frozen in place", as speaking from a physics point of view that is literally the one state we have never observed anything in, be it matter or not.

Having no mass means it can only move at exactly C.

Having mass means your speed must fall somewhere between "just under C" and "just above zero", where the limits of "just" are still being tested.

Exactly zero so far has proved impossible for both matter and energy.
Of course that may not end up holding true, but there seems to be no explanation or intermediary steps between what we already knew and what these people are claiming to know now, I somehow they are correct.
Quite a few so-far-never-once-shown-in-error quantum laws need to be broken first, where any single one of them being broken would be literally world changing news in and of itself.

Re:photons are not particles

[Anonymous Coward]

which goes a long way to explaining how they can behave as waves AND particles.

Quantum mechanics has explained how photons act like waves and particles for nearly hundred years now. Wave functions explain photons just fine in such situations covering both when it acts like particles and when it acts like waves. In some cases you can make simplifications to the equations and get stuff that looks like classical particle behavior, and otherwise you get wave behavior, but it is still one underlying theory and model. It is no different than how Einstein's relativities can give you Newtonian physics in mundane situations where the math simplifies a lot.

It kind of seems like photons are really the relationship between the physical universe and the Higgs field

The research here has pretty much nothing to do with the Higgs field. Photons don't directly interact with the Higgs field, and the Higgs boson is chargeless, so doesn't directly interact with electromagnetism.

...and are very much quantum.

Photons are as quantum as any other microscopic thing, in that there every day situations where quantum behavior can't be seen and is overwhelmed by macroscopic effects, and there are careful experiments that can bring out quantum behavior.

Add this to the state change ability discovered a few months back, and our toolkit for understanding the universe has suddenly got a LOT more interesting.

This doesn't fundamentally change our understanding of the universe or change how we fundamentally model things like photons. It changes our understanding of the implications of existing models in more complex situations.

Re:photons are not particles

[Anonymous Coward]

Having no mass means it can only move at exactly C.

Unless it interacts with a medium that slows it down, which just amounts to the medium reacting in a way to create electric and magnetic fields in such way that the wave propagates slower than c.

Exactly zero so far has proved impossible for both matter and energy.

Maybe the issue is you inserting the word "exactly" when it was about two things being bonded together in a sense that they were at the same speed as best as measured.

Re:photons are not particles

[globaljustin]

this is what i was getting at when I said "you don't freeze a wave, you freeze the ocean"

talk about photons being the relationship between the electromagnetic field and the "physical universe"

I didn't explain it as precisely but this is how I would have stated it if i was smarterer

i guess this is just another example of me hating pop-science headlines...this stuff is cool enough just for what it is!

Re:photons are not particles

[Anonymous Coward]

you lost me at smarterer - or was that dumberer?

Re:photons are not particles

[u38cg]

Your comment sounded kinda insightful, apart from your use of a made up word 'scenarii'.

Re:photons are not particles

[Doghouse13]

Your comment sounded kinda insightful, apart from your use of a made up word 'scenarii'.

I mean - do you mean, as opposed to your own made-up word, 'kinda'? Or your made-up phrase, 'made up', come to that?

(Ob pedantry: Actually, of course, as language seems to be hard-wired into people, but the actual words clearly aren't, every word we ever write or say is ultimately 'made-up' - it's just that groups of people who speak the 'same' language tend to be more-or-less in agreement on what words to use. 'Scenarii' is an abnormal plural that's almost certainly down to a misunderstanding of the singular word's origins; but it's clear what it means, and if enough people start using it, it will gain enough traction to be seen as 'correct'.)

((How the heck does something like the parent get up-voted 'Insightful'?))

Re:photons are not particles

[u38cg]

Oh, it's quite easy to get the mods to find your comments insightful. Generally something pedantic will do it, especially if it involves something rude and untrue abut women.

Actually, GP, had the right etymology - in Italian it would be scenari - but he did blatantly make up a plural that is not used in English. Hypercorrectness is a fault, not a virtue. It confuses your audience and leads them to doubt your accuracy. Kinda silly, really.

Re:photons are not particles

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is that there are different quantum mechanical frameworks (QED, the Standard Model and other QFTs, string theory, etc.) that treat photons somewhat differently as mathematical objects which very accurately reflect and predict the outcome of physical experiments.

Physically, a photon is just the smallest amount of light or electromagnetic radiation and has a momentum related to its frequency, which is always in multiples of a constant determined empirically, up to large energy scales.

The various mathematical models capture some aspects of photons determined experimentally, notably some internal intrinsic degrees of freedom, their almost total lack of interaction with electromagnetically uncharged fundamental particles, the fact that photons themselves have no charge, and that they always obey Bose-Einstein statistics and they follow invariant patterns in their interactions with charged fundamental particles.

(The Higgs boson has no electromagnetic charge, so GGP is wrong on that front.)

It's very common that a photon as a mathematical object is considered to be identical to physical photon, and thus it's common to have people describe photons as excitations in a relativstic quantum field, as particles, as waves, as some combination of the two, or more rarely as a combination of some other type of (possbiliy multidimensional) object. These various descriptions capture a lot of a photon's physical attributes, but photons are _real_ and natural objects, while gauge bosons are _theoretical_ and mathematical objects. The two are very very very closely related thanks to the successes of theoretical quantum mechanics, but the relation is one-way-only: a photon in nature is not a reification of the Standard Model's photon, or QED's photon, or any other theoretical construct.

So I disagree with GP as well.

Finally, you asked a good question: "so how could these researchers possibly say that something that has no resting mass can be 'frozen in place"

Modern quantum mechanics is fully relativistic, fundamentally built on the theory of Special Relativity ("SR"). SR provides a mathematical toolset that allows one to relate the behaviours of objects in one frame of reference in which the observer is not experiencing an acceleration to their behaviours in another frame of reference in which the (different) observer is not experiencing an acceleration. We can build a "centre of momentum" frame in which we cancel out all accelerations and focus on one object, such as a single photon, that remains at its spacelike origin (in whatever coordinate set one chooses to use) forever. "Light crystals" involves having multiple photons remaining relatively "frozen in place" with respect to the origin of the centre of momentum frame. To be useful, that centre of momentum frame can't quite be arbitrary: it has to relate to the frame of a laboratory instrument, for instance, in such a way that the light crystal retains its structure for a reasonable amount of time, and ideally has the crystal's centre-of-momentum move at relatively low speeds in that instrument's inertial frame (otherwise you basically have a boring laser pulse).

Re:photons are not particles

[Anonymous Coward]

"Exactly zero so far has proved impossible for both matter and energy"

No, it's perfectly reasonable in any relativistic theory to build a centre of momentum frame of reference where a particle -- even a particle of light -- remains at the spacelike origin at all times.

For photons, it's awkward to do in ordinary Special Relativity because light is posited to be massless, and in SR a massless object always moves at "c", as that is the only free parameter of the Poincaré group, which is the symmetry group of SR. The awkwardness is mainly that everything else in such an inertial frame moves on a lightlike geodesic.

However, one can abuse the Poincaré group easily enough -- it's just the Lorentz group plus translations, and one can make a deliberately-Lorentz-violating deformation of Special Relativity that has an easy transform back to non-Lorentz-violating good-old Special Relativity. One can alternatively make particles of light almost but not exactly massless, and subtract out the mass term at the end, which is entirely fine if one carefully has it affect only translations, since the translation subgroup is abelian. One can also abuse one's choice of coordinate systems. Any of this can lead to a nice regular timelike geodesic followed by massive particles within the centre-of-momentum frame of a photon (and its light crystal neighbours) also moving timelike, but with other photons (i.e., those not in the crystal) moving along null geodesics.

A light crystal or droplet that is "frozen in place" simply has an arrangement that moves very little around the origin of one's carefully chosen centre-of-momentum inertial frame of reference; highly collimated laser pulses are generally like that anyway, except that the centre-of-momentum moves very quickly compared to the origin of a frame of reference for, say, a piece of laboratory equipment. So the centre of momentum in the chosen photon's frame has to translate into the centre of a composite object that moves much slower than c in the lab equipment's frame. There's lots of ways to do that in principle, and the article poorly describes one way it's now been done in practice.

Nice cut and paste

[Charliemopps]

Nice job linking to an "Blog" that was quite literally cut and pasted from a legit article:
phys.org/news/2014-09-solid-previously-unsolvable-problems.html

Expect the one posted here to get a DMCA request in short order.
Looking at their other "Blogs" it appears this entire site is nothing but cut and pasted stories from various science sites.

Re:Nice cut and paste

[ColdWetDog]

Well, it does say "Science Blog - Straight from the Source". So what were you expecting?

And, like everyone else, I can't make heads or tails out of it either, but at least your source has a cool picture.

Hanna-Barbera Rip-off

[Anonymous Coward]

There was an episode of "Super Friends" or Justice League that mentioned "liquid light". This is sooooo Energy-Crisis-Nixon-Ford-Carter-Exploding-Pinto-Super-Elastic-Bubble-Plastic-Bing-Bang-Boing-Whip-Inflation-Now-button-Mafia-staff-car-keepa-u-hands-off 1970's

Re:Frozen in an excited state. -- That's impossibl

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe that is typical for Frozen.

http://33.media.tumblr.com/6c9...

Wynken, Blynken, and Nod ..

[volvox_voxel]

Crystal light? .. Reminds me of of the poem by Eugene Field. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W...

Wynken, Blynken, and Nod one night Sailed off in a wooden shoe — Sailed on a river of crystal light, Into a sea of dew. "Where are you going, and what do you wish?" The old moon asked the three. "We have come to fish for the herring fish That live in this beautiful sea; Nets of silver and gold have we!" Said Wynken, Blynken, and Nod.

The old moon laughed and sang a song, As they rocked in the wooden shoe, And the wind that sped them all night long Ruffled the waves of dew. The little stars were the herring fish That lived in that beautiful sea — "Now cast your nets wherever you wish — Never afeard are we"; So cried the stars to the fishermen three: Wynken, Blynken, and Nod.

All night long their nets they threw To the stars in the twinkling foam — Then down from the skies came the wooden shoe, Bringing the fishermen home; 'Twas all so pretty a sail it seemed As if it could not be, And some folks thought 'twas a dream they'd dreamed Of sailing that beautiful sea — But I shall name you the fishermen three: Wynken, Blynken, and Nod.

Wynken and Blynken are two little eyes, And Nod is a little head, And the wooden shoe that sailed the skies Is a wee one's trundle-bed. So shut your eyes while mother sings Of wonderful sights that be, And you shall see the beautiful things As you rock in the misty sea, Where the old shoe rocked the fishermen three: Wynken, Blynken, and Nod.

Here is the Silly Symphony version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Re:Wynken, Blynken, and Nod ..

[jfengel]

I don't know why, but to me it comes out oddly comforting when Slashdot reformats it as prose.

This just in...

[in10se]

This just in... faster than light speed is now possible by dropping a clump of light crystals on the floor and then running away.

You know the rules of physics

[atari2600a]

Pics or it didn't crystallize!

Re:You know the rules of physics

[Anonymous Coward]

They tried to take a picture but the photons didn't reach the camera before crystallising!

Solaranite

[Kyogreex]

"Now you can arrange the total destruction of the entire universe served by our sun: The only explosion left is the Solaranite."

And then we cool it...

[Anonymous Coward]

....to 0 Kelvin, and watch physics collapse into a singularity.

John W. Campbell got there first

[nani popoki]

I guess I'm the only one here old enough to remember John W. Campbell's space operas in which he postulated two materials made from "crystallized light". One material, lux, was a super-strong, transparent, insulator. The other, relux, was a perfectly reflecting superconductor. Look up his novel "Islands of Space.

Re:John W. Campbell got there first

[Anonymous Coward]

Campbell's earlier story, "The Black Star Passes" has humans encountering lux and relux for the first time --but nevertheless quickly making use of it. "Islands of Space" basically extends those uses.

Raise the Shields!

[Anonymous Coward]

I am sure using this tech can't be used to make shields, but the though crossed my mind when I read the headline.

APRIL FOOLS!

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Seriously? A crystal?

Right. Can they get it to gaseous form first? :-) Or do they sublimate straight from pure energy, right to solid state?

Also, point of clarification (pun intended): Does this crystalline light need to be first observed as a particle, or will a wave observation prove to be equally effective in achieving desired result?

Re:APRIL FOOLS!

[ultranova]

Can they get it to gaseous form first? :-)

Light is gaseous, ideal gas in fact: photons don't interact with each other but will simply bounce off the walls of a container.

Re:APRIL FOOLS!

[Anonymous Coward]

photons don't interact with each other

In a vacuum, at low intensities. Within media photons can interact through all sorts of nonlinear processes at varying levels of intensity depending on the medium. Even within a vacuum photons can nonlinearly interact, although that requires intensities far beyond what has been achieved in a lab so far, and barely occurs to our knowledge in nature (one example is interaction between a magnetar's magnetic field scattering high energy gamma rays).

Re:APRIL FOOLS!

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Gaseous? So it is an element. ARRGH!

Re:APRIL FOOLS!

[Anonymous Coward]

Acting like an ideal gas says nothing about it being an element. The GP essentially gave the properties that define an ideal gas. Working out the properties of a photon gas just ends up being a typical homework or exam question for physics students.

Re:APRIL FOOLS!

[michelcolman]

In an ideal gas, the molecules collide elastically with each other. I'm no expert, but that's what I remember from university 20 years ago and Wikipedia seems to confirm it. Photons don't collide with each other afaik.

Re:APRIL FOOLS!

[Anonymous Coward]

The only function of the elastic collisions is to allow the loss-less exchange of energy between molecules. The same function can be filled in a photon gas via a blackbody wall in thermal equilibrium that absorbs and re-radiates photons, redistributing energy between photons. So functionally that is the same. One of the main functional differences is that the number of particles in a photon gas is not constant, but you can still get the ideal gas laws and other thermodynamic properties, and a photon gas looks just like a classical ideal gas with zero chemical potential.

Ultimate doomsday weapon

[Anonymous Coward]

Now thats ultimate doomsday weapon. Turn light of sun in massive giant crystal in space... I wonder if those giant diamonds are formed like that?

already use them

[slashmydots]

If you throw them at the undead, you get a +10 radiant damage bonus too.

The power of bad reporting

[Anonymous Coward]

" They don't even use the word "entangled".

To be fair, they do [on the 7th paragraph)

"One of these odd properties is called 'entanglement' in which multiple particles become linked and can affect each other over long distances."

Pictures?

[__aagmrb7289]

Is anyone else annoyed that the article doesn't even have any pictures? Your headline talks about crystallized light! Where are the images of this wonder? Oh right - the headline has nothing to do with the science. Nothing to see here! (literally)

Bad reporting, but....

[slew]

Actually, it is an interesting result. AFAICT, they have taken one of the ideas that came out of quantum optics (the JCM) and created an experimental system that apparently allowed for coupled JCM system to form a simple lattice (probably where they misappropriated the "crystal" metaphor from).

As for what this is good for? Seems like right now it's too simple, so basically nothing, But researchers anticipate this idea will find use as a quantum simulator for studying dissipation and/or decoherence from quantum systems that are far from the equilibrium state. The basic idea seems to be that in this highly coherent JCM lattice system, you can have tight control of tunneling and similar non-linear phenomena. It may make it easier to simulate quantum emergent behavior (quantum effects that show up in macroscopic phenomena).

Using this technique as a quantum simulator tool might be compared to using an analog computer to quickly simulate differential equations more efficiently than a digital computer. For those that like a car analogy, it might be compared to using a tricked out multi-barrel carburetor to study venturi/Bernoulli equations rather than retask your ignition timing / fuel injection computer to do this...

Silmaril?

[georgewad]

Pah! Feanor did this way back in the Years of the Trees.
No elves, not as bright as a Silmaril. Lame.

First commercial application...

[Half-pint HAL]

Oil of Olay now comes with added liquid light complex to give your skin a warm glow.

Something we've never seen before

[jitterman]

Could be because the photons are locked in place...

Re:Frozen in an excited state. -- That's impossibl

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a chemical laser but in solid, not gaseous, form. Put simply, in deference to you, Kent, it's like lasing a stick of dynamite.

Fewer Calories

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't the beauty of this technique is that overall crystal light has fewer calories?

Already is a crystal

[Anonymous Coward]

light already is a crystal as described in Russelian Physics.

Science fiction comes true

[scotts13]

Back in the mid-40's, John W Campbell wrote a series of science fiction stories featuring "lux metal" which was basically matter composed of photons instead of electrons, protons, and neutrons. It had, shall we say, "interesting" properties. Wasn't easy to manufacture, either.

Ah these comments

[Anonymous Coward]

An important thought just occurred to me:
How do I program my browser to say "blah blah blah" when I use the scroll-wheel to scroll down through the comments when on slashdot?

Finally!!

[Anonymous Coward]

I can now run faster than light! :)

Aye, but the next step be photon torpedoes.

New behavior?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or a behavior which has not been noticed by humans till now?

Am sure the same behavior has been going on for billions of years by now. Not exactly new.

I like that

[Whiteox]

I like that! Imagine constructing images out of photons.... - oh wait.....

Zing..

[Anonymous Coward]

So where do I order my lightsaber?

This is not new

[EmagGeek]

Crystal light has been around for a very long time.

Re:This is not new

[ArcadeMan]

Mod parent +9000 funny.

Wait, crystallized light?

[ArcadeMan]

What's next, chocobos?

more dumb jokes

[cellocgw]

Just wait until they create Photon-Nine. The entire universe will freeze! aaaaaaahhhhhh!!!!!!!!!

how?

[Anonymous Coward]

Some sort of superconducting optical distillery apparatus at 0k. perhaps vibrating at a specific oscillation to oppose the expotential frequency gains of a (under electrical stress) atom that would in normal circumstances at room temperature be torn apart and melted when being subject to large currents?

kind of reminds me,...

[Dumpsterskunk]

I was immediately reminded of that very strange story (but all of his stories were very strange) by J.G. Ballard - The Crystal World (1966) - where this sort of thing was mysteriously occurring on its own in a jungle somewhere in Cameroon.

But light has no mass?

[Anonymous Coward]

But if light has no mass, would the cube me massless too? I can't wrap my head around that