http://www.physorg.com/news98645866.html

Researchers Create New Form of Matter

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 - superconductors.

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.

raditional 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.

Source: University of Pittsburgh

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Ken

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