In a remarkable development, researchers have successfully turned light into a supersolid for the first time, paving the way for new insights into the unusual quantum states of matter. This achievement marks a significant milestone in the field of condensed matter physics.

Dimitrios Trypogeorgos from Italy’s National Research Council (CNR) reportedly said, “We actually made light into a solid. That’s pretty awesome.”

This feat builds on earlier work by fellow CNR scientist Danielle Sanvitto, who demonstrated over a decade ago that light could behave like a fluid. However, Trypogeorgos, Sanvitto, and their team have taken it further by creating what they call a quantum “supersolid.”

Supersolids are a strange quantum state of matter that combines properties of solids and liquids. Even while doing PhDs, we don't read much about them at IITs except for relating them to other theories.

Now they've gotten even more mind-bending, as scientists have transformed light itself into a supersolid. It's a breakthrough that could lead to new quantum and photonic technologies.

Beyond the everyday solids, liquids, gases, and plasmas, an entire zoo of exotic states of matter exists. Long theorized but only recently created, a supersolid has a crystalline structure like a regular solid, but it can also, counterintuitively, flow freely like a fluid.

"We can imagine the supersolid as a fluid composed of coherent quantum droplets periodically arranged in space," says atomic and optical physicist Iacopo Carusotto from the University of Trento in Italy.

The droplets, Carusotto explains, "are able to flow through an obstacle without undergoing perturbations, maintaining their spatial arrangement and mutual distance unchanged as happens in a crystalline solid."

Supersolids have previously only ever been made out of atoms, but the team led by scientists at the National Research Council (CNR) in Italy has now created one using photons for the first time. Read more: https://www.sciencealert.com/world-first-physicists-create-a-supersolid-out-of-light