Scientists Have Turned Light Into a Supersolid—Here's Why That's a Big Deal
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Scientists Have Turned Light Into a Supersolid—Here's Why That's a Big Deal
Published Mar 07, 2025 at 12:13 PM EST
Scientists have succeeded in making light behave like a "supersolid" for the first time—a breakthrough that could improve our understanding of this exotic phase of matter.
A supersolid has an ordered structure like a solid but can also flow without friction like a superfluid, and previously they have only been produced in so-called "Bose–Einstein condensates"—which are formed when a gas of atoms is cooled to near absolute zero.
"This is only the beginning of understanding supersolidity," said Italy-based physicists Antonio Gianfate of CNR Nanotec and Davide Nigro of the University of Pavia in a research summary.
In our lives, we tend to encounter matter mainly in three distinct phases—solid, liquid and gases. (Although you may come across plasma in the form of fluorescent lights.)
"At temperatures close to absolute zero, the quantum-mechanical nature of atoms emerges and exotic phases of matter appear," explained the researchers.
Such exotic phases include supersolids, which were first predicted back in the 1960s, but were only first demonstrated in 2017 by researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and ETH Zurich in Switzerland.
The science involved is incredibly advanced.
"We decided to investigate whether these conditions can be achieved in a photonic semiconductor platform (in which photons are conducted in a similar way to electrons), to enable photos to behave as a supersolid," the duo added.
To create their photonic supersolid, the researchers fired laser light at a special semiconductor platform, made of aluminum gallium arsenide, in which photos are conducted like electrons in metal.
The system allows the photons of light to occupy one of three quantum states, all of which have the same energy but sport different wavenumbers.
At the start of the experiment, the few photons in the platform are largely incoherent, but as they hit a threshold count they form a single condensate.
Gianfate and Nigro explain it via a comparison to taking seats in an auditorium: "Imagine being in a crowded theater where all the seats are occupied except for three in the front row: one in the center and the other two at opposite ends of the row.
"The central seat has the best view, so that's where people want to sit, but only a single person can sit there.
"In a quantum theater, where bosonic particles (particles with integer spin) go, everyone can sit in the central seat, forming what is called a Bose–Einstein condensate—a superfluid state in which a large fraction of particles simultaneously occupy the lowest-energy quantum state."
When the total number of photos increases further, however, pairs of photons are pushed out of the 'center seat' into the adjacent states (the other two chairs) to lower the energy of the system.
"These photons form satellite condensates that have opposite nonzero wavenumbers but the same energy (they are isoenergetic)," explained the researchers.
In this way, he concluded, "the supersolid state emerges, and a spatial modulation in the density of photons in the system occurs that is characteristic of the supersolid state."
Reference
Trypogeorgos, D., Gianfrate, A., Landini, M., Nigro, D., Gerace, D., Carusotto, I., Riminucci, F., Baldwin, K. W., Pfeiffer, L. N., Martone, G. I., De Giorgi, M., Ballarini, D., & Sanvitto, D. (2025). Emerging supersolidity in photonic-crystal polariton condensates. Nature. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-08616-9