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**Scientists ‘Freeze’ Light, Creating Supersolid State in Groundbreaking Experiment**

**Pavia, Italy – June 29, 2025** – In a breakthrough that could revolutionize fields like optical computing and energy transport, a team of researchers from the University of Pavia and CNR Nanotec in Italy have successfully created a “supersolid” state of light. The findings, published in *Nature*, demonstrate that light, in the form of photons, can be manipulated to exhibit properties of both a solid crystal and a frictionless superfluid.

Traditionally, light, which travels at 300,000 km/s in a vacuum, has been viewed as either a particle or a wave. This new research shows that light can be transformed into a supersolid, a state where particles arrange themselves in a crystalline structure but also flow with virtually no viscosity.

The team achieved this by using a quantum mechanical approach involving “polaritons,” hybrid particles that behave like both light and matter. They used an aluminium gallium arsenide semiconductor platform equipped with a laser and a source of excitons. The platform’s microscopic periodic grating trapped the polaritons, allowing them to settle into a periodic lattice. This resulted in the polaritons organizing in a way that behaved like a crystal structure with superfluid coherence.

Scientists had previously achieved slowed and even stopped light pulses. They also created Bose-Einstein condensates of photons (essentially liquid light), but turning light into a solid structure is a novel achievement.

This new research opens doors to new possibilities in condensed matter physics, a field responsible for optical fibers, lasers, semiconductors, and quantum computing. The creation of a photonic supersolid could lead to advancements in lossless optical energy transport and the development of advanced optical computing elements.

“This experiment demonstrates that light can exhibit surprising and potentially useful quantum states under the right conditions,” said Shamim Haque Mondal, a researcher in the Physics Division at the State Forensic Science Laboratory in Kolkata, India. Mondal notes the research could lead to more experimentation and applications using photonic supersolids.

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