A single "super photon" made up of many thousands of individual light particles
From: University of Bonn
April 1, 2021 -- About ten years ago, researchers at the University of Bonn produced such
an extreme aggregate state for the first time and presented a completely new
light source. The state is called optical Bose-Einstein condensate and has
captivated many physicists ever since, because this exotic world of light
particles is home to its very own physical phenomena. Researchers led by Prof.
Dr. Martin Weitz, who discovered the super photon, and theoretical physicist
Prof. Dr. Johann Kroha have returned from their latest "expedition"
into the quantum world with a very special observation. They report of a new,
previously unknown phase transition in the optical Bose-Einstein condensate.
This is a so-called overdamped phase. The results may in the long term be
relevant for encrypted quantum communication. The study has been published in
the journal Science.
The Bose-Einstein condensate is an
extreme physical state that usually only occurs at very low temperatures.
What’s special: The particles in this system are no longer distinguishable and
are predominantly in the same quantum mechanical state, in other words they
behave like a single giant "superparticle". The state can therefore
be described by a single wave function.
In 2010, researchers led by Martin Weitz
succeeded for the first time in creating a Bose-Einstein condensate from light
particles (photons). Their special system is still in use today: Physicists
trap light particles in a resonator made of two curved mirrors spaced just over
a micrometer apart that reflect a rapidly reciprocating beam of light. The
space is filled with a liquid dye solution, which serves to cool down the
photons. This is done by the dye molecules "swallowing" the photons
and then spitting them out again, which brings the light particles to the temperature
of the dye solution - equivalent to room temperature. Background: The system
makes it possible to cool light particles in the first place, because their
natural characteristic is to dissolve when cooled.
Clear
separation of two phases
Phase transition is what physicists call
the transition between water and ice during freezing. But how does the
particular phase transition occur within the system of trapped light particles?
The scientists explain it this way: The somewhat translucent mirrors cause photons
to be lost and replaced, creating a non-equilibrium that results in the system
not assuming a definite temperature and being set into oscillation. This
creates a transition between this oscillating phase and a damped phase. Damped
means that the amplitude of the vibration decreases.
"The overdamped phase we observed
corresponds to a new state of the light field, so to speak," says lead
author Fahri Emre Öztürk, a doctoral student at the Institute for Applied
Physics at the University of Bonn. The special characteristic is that the
effect of the laser is usually not separated from that of Bose-Einstein
condensate by a phase transition, and there is no sharply defined boundary
between the two states. This means that physicists can continually move back
and forth between effects.
"However, in our experiment, the
overdamped state of the optical Bose-Einstein condensate is separated by a
phase transition from both the oscillating state and a standard laser,"
says study leader Prof. Dr. Martin Weitz. "This shows that there is a
Bose-Einstein condensate, which is really a different state than the standard
laser. "In other words, we are dealing with two separate phases of the
optical Bose-Einstein condensate," he emphasizes.
The researchers plan to use their findings
as a basis for further studies to search for new states of the light field in
multiple coupled light condensates, which can also occur in the system.
"If suitable quantum mechanically entangled states occur in coupled light
condensates, this may be interesting for transmitting quantum-encrypted
messages between multiple participants," says Fahri Emre Öztürk.
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