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news release:
Pitt researchers create new form of matter: New
substance combines characteristics of superconductors with those of a laser
Pittsburgh, PA, 18 May 2007:
Physicists at the University of Pittsburgh have demonstrated a new form of
matter that melds the characteristics of lasers with those of the world’s best
electrical conductors. The work introduces a new method of moving energy from
one point to another as well as a low-energy means of producing a light beam
like that from a laser. The Pitt researchers and their collaborators at the Bell
Labs of Alcatel-Lucent in New Jersey detail the process in the May 18 issue of
the journal Science.
The new state is a solid filled with a collection
of energy particles known as polaritons that have been trapped and slowed,
explained lead investigator David Snoke, an associate professor in the physics
and astronomy department in Pitt’s School of Arts and Sciences. Snoke worked
with Pitt graduate students Ryan Balili and Vincent Hartwell on the project.
Using specially designed optical structures with
nanometer-thick layers—which allow polaritons to move freely inside the solid—Snoke
and his colleagues captured the polaritons in the form of a superfluid. In
superfluids and in their solid counterparts, superconductors, matter
consolidates to act as a single energy wave rather than as individual particles.
In superconductors, this allows for the perfect flow of electricity. In the new
state of matter demonstrated at Pitt—which can be called a polariton superfluid—the
wave behavior leads to a pure light beam similar to that from a laser but is
much more energy efficient.
Traditional superfluids and superconductors
require extremely low temperatures, approximately negative 280 and negative 450
degrees Fahrenheit for a superconductor and superfluid, respectively. The
polariton superfluid is more stable at higher temperatures, and may be capable
of being demonstrated at room temperature in the near future.
The Pitt research builds on current efforts in
physics laboratories around the world to create materials, which mix the
characteristics of superconductors and lasers. Snoke’s work provides a new
method to trap and manipulate the energy particles. Applied to technology, this
technique could provide new ways of controlled transfer of optical signals
through solid matter.
Snoke’s polariton trap was devised with a
technique similar to that used for superfluids made of atoms in a gaseous state
known as the Bose-Einstein condensate. Three scientists shared the 2001 Nobel
Prize in Physics for producing the condensate.
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