After hard work, finally a team of physicists has managed to create for the first time in history 'liquid light' at room temperature. As a detail, tell you that in previous works that effect had already been achieved although at temperatures very close to absolute zero, not like in this case since we are talking about getting light to have this effect at room temperature.
Without going into too much detail, something that we will do in later lines, tell you that getting the light to behave like a liquid has been achieved thanks to the mixture of light and matter. As you well know, light generally behaves like a wave and even sometimes like a particle that always travels in a straight line. On certain occasions, this can reach behave as if it were a liquid reaching, even, to sneak between the objects.
A group of Italian physicists manages to create 'liquid light' at room temperature for the first time
As we said before, to make light behave like a liquid, it has to be mixed with matter, something that is achieved thanks to polaritons, nail 'almost particles'arising from the coupling between a light wave and an electrical polarization wave. At this point, as the physicists responsible for this project comment, despite the fact that polaritons are not elementary particles such as photons or electrons, if they behave like these thanks to the rules that the quantum theory that govern them.
As a detail, tell you that the true physical interest of the so-called as'liquid light'is that this, in addition to a strange form of light, is a superfluid, without any viscosity, and a kind of Bose-Einstein condensate, which in many occasions is described as the fifth state of matter and that only occurs in certain materials at temperatures very close to absolute zero.
In this very concrete and strange state, according to the laws of physics, particles travel at an incredibly slow speed y follow the principles dictated by quantum mechanics more than those present in quantum physics since, instead of as particles, they begin to behave like waves occupying a position in space that cannot be precisely determined.
This milestone can serve for the development of new advanced technologies
An interesting point in all this research lies in the technology that has had to be developed in order to prove that it is possible to create 'liquid light' at room temperature. On this occasion it has been design an optical device consisting of two mirrors, one facing the other, and coated in a thin film of organic molecules only 100 nanometers thick. To give you an idea, a human hair usually has a diameter of 50.000 nanometers.
Once the device was manufactured, it was arranged to be bombarded with 35 femtosecond laser pulses. Thanks to this, it was possible that light began to behave like a superfluid quantum liquid around an obstacle. This superfluid has some really surprising properties such as something as simple as that, unlike when a liquid spills, which creates ripples and eddies, in this case these ripples and eddies are suppressed around the obstacles allowing this superfluid follow your path without alteration.
To understand a little better the importance of an investigation like this, highlight the words of the team of researchers that have been working on the project, words that tell us how this milestone can unlock new studies in hydrodynamics quantum or allow us develop new devices with polaritons at room temperature to be used in future advanced technologies such as the production of superconducting materials such as LEDs, solar panels and even lasers, technologies that, for example, can later be applied in the creation of computers based on polaritons.