Scientists Just Created Supersolid Light

By Pune Media On Jun 3, 2025

Constantine Johnny/Getty Images

Solids, liquids, and gases are the primary states of matter that most people interact with in daily life. While not as readily occurring, you may even add plasma to the list, considering you can create it in your microwave. However, these four commonly occurring forms are far from the wide spectrum of weird states of matter that exist. Matter defies all common rules and logic when you tinker with substances on a quantum level.

Discoveries in the field of condensed matter physics has given the world a fair share of unique materials, such as superfluids, superconductors, supersolids, and more. The latest addition to this list came when researchers in Italy’s National Research Council created supersolid light by firing a laser at a semiconductor. The resulting material displayed extraordinary properties like frictionless flow in a solid-like structure. Supersolid light has some major advantages over previous condensed materials, meaning it might revolutionize the field of quantum computing, artificial intelligence, data storage, and more.

The journey to creating supersolid light

Andriy Onufriyenko/Getty Images

Apart from the four states of matter mentioned earlier, a fifth state of matter known as the Bose-Einstein-Condensate (BEC) was predicted way back in 1924 by Albert Einstein and Satyendra Narayan Bose. It was only in 1995 that scientists could actually create BEC in the lab by cooling Rubidium atoms to almost zero Kelvin. When cooled to such extreme temperatures, the once distinguishable Rubidium atoms condense to create a super atom that can be observed under a microscope.

However, scientists had already seen how such low temperatures could result in strange phenomena. In 1938, scientists found out cooling Helium 4 to under 2.17 Kelvins completely transformed its properties, making it a superfluid. The superfluid showed zero viscosity and slipped through the container that would perfectly hold it under normal temperatures.

The next big discovery happened when scientists found cooling atoms to even lower temperatures can cause them to align into a non-crystalline solid, aka a supersolid. These materials showed the frictionless properties of superfluids while acting as a solid. NASA’s Cold Atom Laboratory has also been experimenting with condensed materials in the International Space Station.

Despite intriguing scientists for decades, these materials could only be created under extreme temperatures, making them hard to research. The latest supersolid light, though, can be synthesized using light (all previous supersolids have used cooled atoms in the past). That’s another reason why the latest discovery of this new material is a huge feat with the potential to open new avenues of research.

The experiment that created supersolid light

Pixel B/Shutterstock

The team at Italy’s National Research Council took a fundamentally different route than all previous experiments that involved cooling atoms to extremely low temperatures. Rather, they fired a laser at a gallium arsenide structure with multiple microscopic ridges. The falling light creates a quasiparticle (formed by the interaction of photons with the semiconductor) known as polaritons. The ridges then act like microscopic walls in a maze to force these quasiparticles into forming a supersolid.

The resulting material displayed properties similar to previously synthesized supersolids like zero viscosity and solid like behavior, validating the creation of supersolid light. The newly synthesized material is relatively easier to work with, as researching previous supersolids required handling chilled atoms. The new material can facilitate the research on quantum particles and may also transform how we store and transform information.

The research to use supersolid light for creating better and bigger neural networks is already underway. Considering neural networks are an integral part of Artificial Intelligence, the new material has the potential to create more sophisticated AI models. Another research looks into the possibility of using polaritons on computer chips to create faster and much more energy-efficient processors than the most powerful processors available today.

_{Images are for reference only.Images and contents gathered automatic from google or 3rd party sources.All rights on the images and contents are with their legal original owners.}

_{Aggregated From –}

_{Source link}