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RandomFactor writes:

Atoms emit light at precise energies determined by the orbits of their electrons. University of Chicago researchers have succeeded in 'shaking' electrons, creating "dopplegangers" at new energies, "a breakthrough that lets scientists create hybrid particles which are part-atom and part-light, with a wide variety of new behaviors.

"In order to make photons collide with one another, we use atoms as a go-between," said postdoctoral researcher Logan Clark, who led the research. "But we were running into a problem because the photons only interact with atoms whose electronic orbitals are at very particular energies. So we asked: What if we could make copies of the orbitals at whatever energies we wanted?"

And that's exactly what they did

By varying the intensity of a laser field tuned precisely to an atomic resonance, the team was able to shift the orbitals of an electron. Shaking the orbitals by periodically varying this intensity produced the desired copies.

While the dopplegangers appear at multiple energies, they remain bound to the original. Still, by

allowing photons to interact with these shaken atoms, the team has created what they call "Floquet polaritons"—quasi-particles which are part-light and part-atom, and unlike regular photons, interact with each other quite strongly. These interactions are essential for making matter from light. Making polaritons with shaken atoms can give the polaritons much more flexibility to move around and collide with each other in new ways.

"Floquet polaritons are full of surprises; we're still continuing to understand them better," [postdoctoral researcher Logan Clark, who led the research] said. "Our next order of business, though, will be to use these colliding photons to make topological 'fluids' of light. It is a tremendously exciting time."

Shaken atoms could also cause a stir in other areas, for example in optical frequency conversion, which is necessary for securing quantum communications.

Journal Reference
Logan W. Clark et al. Interacting Floquet polaritons^[$], Nature (2019). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-019-1354-5

Original Submission