{"id":243312,"date":"2026-08-28T01:34:27","date_gmt":"2026-08-28T06:34:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/08\/light-particles-reveal-critical-scaling-in-a-two-dimensional-photon-gas"},"modified":"2026-08-28T01:34:27","modified_gmt":"2026-08-28T06:34:27","slug":"light-particles-reveal-critical-scaling-in-a-two-dimensional-photon-gas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/08\/light-particles-reveal-critical-scaling-in-a-two-dimensional-photon-gas","title":{"rendered":"Light particles reveal critical scaling in a two-dimensional photon gas"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/light-particles-reveal-critical-scaling-in-a-two-dimensional-photon-gas.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>A team of researchers from the University of Bonn, Heidelberg University and the National Autonomous University of Mexico has studied the critical behavior of light particles (photons) close to a phase transition. This critical scaling behavior, which sees thermodynamic quantities grow extremely large or diverge shortly prior to Bose-Einstein condensation, had never before been seen in photon gases until the researchers successfully secured precisely this proof.<\/p>\n<p>In the research <a href=\"https:\/\/www.science.org\/doi\/10.1126\/sciadv.aee2942\" target=\"_blank\">published<\/a> in the journal <i>Science Advances<\/i>, the team measured the spatial correlations of a nearly non-interacting 2D photon gas trapped in a mirror box at the moment of condensation, determining the critical exponent\u2014a quantity describing the rapid increase in the correlation length as the temperature changes near the phase transition.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A team of researchers from the University of Bonn, Heidelberg University and the National Autonomous University of Mexico has studied the critical behavior of light particles (photons) close to a phase transition. This critical scaling behavior, which sees thermodynamic quantities grow extremely large or diverge shortly prior to Bose-Einstein condensation, had never before been seen [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-243312","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-particle-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243312","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\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=243312"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243312\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=243312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=243312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=243312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}