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

Been able to buy this for Years

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Finally!!

[Anonymous Coward]

I can now run faster than light! :)

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....

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.

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".

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

[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.

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: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:photons are not particles

[u38cg]

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