Scientists Create A Quasiparticle That Behaves Like It Has Negative Mass

 

Scientists have used lasers and a sophisticated optical system to generate something we have never witnessed before, a quasiparticle that acts like it has negative mass. This discovery could advance both lasers and their applications as well as help us understand well this almost-sci-fi matter.

 

The object in question is a quasiparticle known as trion-polariton, a strange interaction between photons and electromagnetic field created by certain electron arrangements in a semiconductor, another quasiparticle called an exciton. Quasiparticles act just like regular particles and they are very beneficial in forefront physical research. What researchers have detected, as reported in Nature Physics, is a polariton that acts like it has negative mass.

 

Just to give you a logic of what something with negative mass would do, consider that if you were to pull something towards you, if it had negative mass it would drive away from you. (It is not clear, at the moment, if cats are made of negative mass particles.)

 

“By causing an exciton to give up some of its identity to a photon to generate a polariton, we end up with an object that has a negative mass related with it,” senior author Professor Nick Vamivakas, from Rochester University, said in a report. “That’s kind of a mind-boggling thing to think about since if you try to push or pull it, it will go in the opposite direction from what your instinct would tell you.”

 

The set-up itself is very exciting. A laser is shot inside an optical microcavity where it is limited. In there, they place a semiconductor that creates the exciton. The exciton then interacts with confined light to generate the polariton.

 

Negative mass debates are often related with warp drives and wormholes but I’m afraid this won’t help resolve either. But it looks like it could be involved in creating more efficient lasers because it's likely to get light out of the polaritons with a lot less energy than in a regular laser.

 

“With the polaritons, we’ve generated with this device, the instruction for getting a laser to operate is entirely different,” Vamivakas described. “The system starts lasing at a much lower energy input.”

 

 

References:

https://www.sciencealert.com/negative-mass-quasi-particle-polaritons-low-energy-lasers

https://qrius.com/breakthrough-physics-negative-mass-particles/