{"id":184426,"date":"2024-03-08T22:19:24","date_gmt":"2024-03-09T04:19:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2024\/03\/optically-trapped-quantum-droplets-of-light-can-bind-together-to-form-macroscopic-complexes"},"modified":"2024-03-08T22:19:24","modified_gmt":"2024-03-09T04:19:24","slug":"optically-trapped-quantum-droplets-of-light-can-bind-together-to-form-macroscopic-complexes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2024\/03\/optically-trapped-quantum-droplets-of-light-can-bind-together-to-form-macroscopic-complexes","title":{"rendered":"Optically trapped quantum droplets of light can bind together to form macroscopic complexes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/optically-trapped-quantum-droplets-of-light-can-bind-together-to-form-macroscopic-complexes3.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Condensed matter systems and photonic technologies are regularly used by researchers to create microscale platforms that can simulate the complex dynamics of many interacting quantum particles in a more accessible setting. Some examples include ultracold atomic ensembles in optical lattices, superconducting arrays, and photonic crystals and waveguides. In 2006 a new platform emerged with the demonstration of macroscopically coherent quantum fluids of exciton-polaritons to explore many-body quantum phenomena through optical techniques.<\/p>\n<p>When a piece semiconductor is placed between two mirrors\u2014an optical microresonator\u2014the electronic excitations within can become strongly influenced by photons trapped between the mirrors. The resulting new bosonic <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/quantum+particles\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">quantum particles<\/a>, known as exciton-polaritons (or polaritons for short), can under the right circumstances undergo a phase transition into a nonequilibrium Bose-Einstein condensate and form a macroscopic quantum fluid or a droplet of light.<\/p>\n<p>Quantum fluids of polaritons have many salient properties, one being that they are optically configurable and readable, permitting easy measurements of the <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/polariton\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">polariton<\/a> dynamics. This is what makes them so advantageous to simulate many-body physics.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Condensed matter systems and photonic technologies are regularly used by researchers to create microscale platforms that can simulate the complex dynamics of many interacting quantum particles in a more accessible setting. Some examples include ultracold atomic ensembles in optical lattices, superconducting arrays, and photonic crystals and waveguides. In 2006 a new platform emerged with the [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":661,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,1617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-184426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-particle-physics","category-quantum-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184426","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/661"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=184426"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184426\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=184426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=184426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=184426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}