Physicists Mikhail Lukin (Harvard) and Vladan
Vuletic (MIT) claim to have invented a new form of matter: photons that
act as though they have mass. I have no idea if it's true. But I am
certain that Prof. Lukin knows exactly how to get media attention:
"Photonic
molecules," however, behave less like traditional lasers and more like
something you might find in science fiction – the light saber.
"Most
of the properties of light we know about originate from the fact that
photons are massless, and that they do not interact with each other,"
Lukin said. "What we have done is create a special type of medium in
which photons interact with each other so strongly that they begin to
act as though they have mass, and they bind together to form molecules.
This type of photonic bound state has been discussed theoretically for
quite a while, but until now it hadn't been observed.
"It's not an
in-apt analogy to compare this to light sabers," Lukin added. "When
these photons interact with each other, they're pushing against and
deflect each other. The physics of what's happening in these molecules
is similar to what we see in the movies."
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