Believe it or not, scientists have managed to ‘freeze’ pure light

We all know that freezing is the process by which a liquid transforms into a solid, but believe it or not, a team of Italian scientists has managed to 'freeze' light. For the first time, they have made light behave like a "supersolid". The group of scientists, consisting of nanotechnologists and physicists, changed science as it is known to a common person.

The new discovery was published in Nature Journal on March 5.The study, titled "A supersolid made using photons", revealed that supersolids are a unique phase of matter that combines the friction-free flow of superfluids with an ordered structure.

Add WION as a Preferred Source

They have previously been achieved only with condensates of ultracold atoms. The observation of the supersolid state in photons provides a new window through which to peer into its mysteries.

As quoted by Newsweek, Italy-based physicists Antonio Gianfate of CNR Nanotec and Davide Nigro of the University of Pavia wrote in a research summary: "This is only the beginning of understanding supersolidity."

Normal freezing happens when the temperature of the liquid is lowered to its freezing point, causing the molecules to slow down and come together in a crystalline structure. This is how we understand the law of physics.

However, researchers have done something stunning. They explained, "At temperatures close to absolute zero, the quantum-mechanical nature of atoms emerges and exotic phases of matter appear."

Supersolids, which were first predicted in the 1960s but first shown in 2017 by scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and ETH Zurich in Switzerland, are one example of such strange phases.

"We decided to investigate whether these conditions can be achieved in a photonic semiconductor platform (in which photons are conducted in a similar way to electrons) to enable photos to behave as a supersolid," the duo added.

They explained Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) as they said that a superfluid state is a state in which a large fraction of particles simultaneously occupy the lowest-energy quantum state.

BEC is a state of matter that occurs at extremely low temperatures, typically near absolute zero (0 K, -273.15°C, or -459.67°F). At these temperatures, a group of bosons (particles with integer spin) occupy the same quantum state, behaving as a single entity.

Scientists said that when the total number of photos increases further, however, pairs of photons are pushed out into the adjacent states to lower the energy of the system.

"These photons form satellite condensates that have opposite nonzero wavenumbers but the same energy (they are isoenergetic)," explained the researchers, concluding, "the supersolid state emerges, and a spatial modulation in the density of photons in the system occurs that is characteristic of the supersolid state".

(With inputs from agencies)