Binding photons together slows them down and gives them mass.

Photon Clusters.

This discovery really grabbed my interest. Some physicists found a way to bind photons together in triplets by shooting them through a cluster of super-cooled rubidium atoms. By cooling the atoms, they are able to minimize energy levels, which (if I understand correctly) creates a special medium that decreases the velocity of photons upon entry. Nothing new...Every medium has its own rate of induction. What makes this special is, the photons exit the medium in an entangled state, and bound in triplets. Furthermore, rather than re-accelerating to the speed of light upon exit, the photon clusters gain mass and move much slower. This is particularly important, because photons are normally massless particles, and they always move at the speed of light...at least that's what we thought.

My question: Is the cooled rubidium cluster a Bose-Einstein condensate??? That would be good to know.

I wonder if this effect could also be used to create a propulsion system that starts with massless photons shot out of the back of a rocket after they gained mass.

a reply to: BELIEVERpriest

I know they're recently been able to slow down Electrons, I wasn't aware of this though. I have no idea how this could be used in the future, or if it would be used to experiment within the LHC.

Great article. Good questions to ponder.

if you shoot two photons at each other at ludicrous energies you get a positron and an electron

pair production and whatnot

a reply to: BotheLumberJack

The process they use to slow electrons is similar to how they cooled the rubidium cluster.

They hope to use this process to advance quantum computing. It started with photon pairs, now it's triplets, but what they really hope for are more intricate photonic molecular structures like...... LIGHT CRYSTALS. Just the idea of light crystals lights my imagination on fire.

a reply to: Blue Shift

That would be a fascinating possibility...."Fire the photo-molecular thrusters at full throttle!"

a reply to: BELIEVERpriest

Light Crystals is an interesting thing for sure.

From the article linked -

Given the highly experimental nature of Vuletic and Lukin’s research, it will likely be a while before it is put to any practical use. In fact, the researchers said they themselves often don’t know what to expect from their experiments. Going forward, they said they intend to figure out ways to cause other interactions among photons, such as making them repel one another.

I'd like to see what would happen if they did that, would some kind of Implosion take place? And if photon triplets are better carriers of information, what information are they capable of encapsulating?

a reply to: BotheLumberJack

Could you imagine the military applications?Photo-nuclear fission. Sure it's a horrible possibility, but interesting nonetheless.

a reply to: BELIEVERpriest

If i'm reading this correctly these scientists actually configured the electro-magnetic field into a new particle with mass.
If that is true my mind is blown. I'd like to know if these particles have spin. Is it a fermion or a boson? Does it have any charge?
So many questions.

originally posted by: BELIEVERpriest
Photon Clusters.

This discovery really grabbed my interest

Eh...there are so many holes in this it isn't funny.

You can't slow photons down.

Photons travel at light speed. When they enter a medium, they interact with atoms, and they "appear" to slow down, because they are actually being "absorbed" by the atom, then "re-emitted" by that atom, and the time spent in the atom itself, is what causes the delay, and hence the "apparent" speed reduction.

But, the photon hops from atom to atom within the medium at the same light speed "c", as it does in a vacuum. In fact, the space between the atoms is mostly empty space, so it is still traveling in a vacuum, even when in the medium.

We only say light slows down inside a medium, because it's a simplification of the complex process, of atom hopping.

Next, photons can't gain mass, this too is a load of baloney. They give no evidence of this mass. How did they measure this? Well, you can "infer" there must be a mass, if you accept the photons travel slower than "c" in a vacuum. Because, anything traveling less than the speed of light, must have a mass. But, there's no way to measure this directly. So, it's all crap.

Wouldn't, 0 mass + 0 mass + 0 mass = 0 mass?

a reply to: Deluxe

Those are some really good questions. Unfortunately the article doesn't go into that kind of detail. I don't know where that kind of info can be found. I don't think there can be electric charge. Charge is a conserved property, so where would it come from?

a reply to: burgerbuddy

That's my assumption, but I also don't believe photons are really "massless", but have a ground state non-zero mass that we can't measure yet.

a reply to: BELIEVERpriest
Actually the rest mass of photons are zero.
I'm with Amptah. Something is fishy about this article.

My gut tells me they shot a laser into this medium excited it a bit and when the energy dropped a little it released a known particle.

a reply to: AMPTAH

Well this is the second time these physicist have produced results, so obviously there's something going on that the Standard Model has yet to explain.

You're right about the speed of light constant. Regular photons never really slow down, as photons are really just quantized waves.

Again, I don't believe any particle can truly be massless. My definition for massless is the ground state non-zero mass of the quantum vacuum condensate.

And remember, even in the internal spaces within atoms, there is no such thing as empty space. Absolute vacuums don't exist.

a reply to: Deluxe

Not all physicists would agree that photons have a rest mass of absolute zero.

a reply to: BELIEVERpriest

Fair enough but considering the photon will never be at rest we don't really have to worry about rest mass.
If you were somehow able to travel next to a photon at the speed of light, which is forbidden, it would have rest mass zero.

a reply to: Deluxe

Well, think about pair production. If two colliding gamma photons produce a positron-electron pair (which) both have mass, how can photons be absolutely massless. There has to be a ground state non-zero mass that we have yet to measure. That's what this experiment implies IMO.

a reply to: BELIEVERpriest
E= MC^2 actually has another component (where M is rest mass here)
E2 = (mc2)2 + (pc)2,

where p is the object's momentum. For an object at rest (p=0), this becomes E=mc2. But for a massless object, like a photon, this becomes E=pc

So photons have kinetic energy via momentum. That in turn can be converted to particles with mass even if the photon has a rest mass of zero.

a reply to: burgerbuddy

maybe they're talking about relativistic mass. which is basically saying photons have energy. when they impact something they impart some of that energy to what they collided