Robert Dall with the spiral laser beam. Image Stuart Hay
Physicists at ANU have engineered a spiral laser beam and used it to create a whirlpool of hybrid light-matter particles called polaritons. "Creating circulating currents of polaritons - vortices - and controlling them has been a long-standing challenge," said leader of the team, theoretician Dr Elena Ostrovskaya, from the Research School of Physics and Engineering. "We can now create a circulating flow of these hybrid particles and sustain it for hours." Polaritons are hybrid particles that have properties of both matter and light. The ability to control polariton flows in this way could aid the development of completely novel technology to link conventional electronics with new laser and fibre-based technologies. Polaritons form in semiconductors when laser light interacts with electrons and holes (positively charged vacancies) so strongly that it is no longer possible to distinguish light from matter. The brass mask used to create the spiral laser beam. The spiral is created by a circular pattern of holes of increasing size.
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