Physicists have first shots castizo-wave light

the light allowed us to look at ourselves with only one hand, identifying himself only as particles or waves.

Swiss physics from the Federal Polytechnic school of Lausanne under the supervision of Fabrizio Carbone (Fabrizio Carbone) was able to make light behave both as a particle and as a wave, and to follow it, using the so-called polaritons.

Polaritons are one of the relatively recently created virtual particles, which, like the photon, at the same time behaves as a wave and as a particle. It consists of three components - optical resonator (set of two mirrors, reflectors), confined between the light wave and the quantum well of the atom and its orbiting electrons, which periodically absorbs and emits a quantum of light.

Carbone and his colleagues have created such a polariton, “switches” which they could track using a transmission electron microscope, without disturbing the state of the particle. They were able to achieve this due to the plasmon resonators is another relatively new technology that allows you to convert collective oscillations of electrons in metals in light, heat and other energy forms, or to absorb them.

The role of such a resonator played a small silver nanowire, which scientists periodically irradiated with short laser pulses. After each flash, the thread appeared polaritons, which scientists studied by bombarding them with beams of electrons from the “muzzle” of the microscope. Depending on the state of polaritons, electrons or accelerated or slowed down, allowing the group Carboniferous first to look at how light behaves both as a particle and as a wave.

“This experiment demonstrated that in principle we can directly observe and remove it, how does quantum mechanics, with all its contradictions and paradoxes. The ability to control and observe quantum processes on the nanometer scale opens a new way to create quantum computers,” says Carbone.