
New half-light half-matter particles may hold the key to a computing revolution - okket
https://www.exeter.ac.uk/news/featurednews/title_686973_en.html
======
kurthr
This is interesting... a particular sort of surface plasmons which allow sub-
wavelength patterning, which could mean nanoscale...

 _" Application of SPPs enables subwavelength optics in microscopy and
lithography beyond the diffraction limit. It also enables the first steady-
state micro-mechanical measurement of a fundamental property of light itself:
the momentum of a photon in a dielectric medium. Other applications are
photonic data storage, light generation, and bio-photonics."_

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surface_plasmon_polariton](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surface_plasmon_polariton)

~~~
kakarot
It's funny, last weekend I went on a research spree learning about SPPs and
plasmonic metamaterials after stumbling upon them while studying acoustic
metamaterials with a negative diffraction index.

Here is some further reading on Wikipedia if you're interested:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasmonic_metamaterial#Microsc...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasmonic_metamaterial#Microscopy)

~~~
Asooka
Can you say if this technology will enable another ten or hundredfold increase
in GHz and decrease in memory latency, giving us faster variants of our
current technology, or if it will require an entirely new computing paradigm
like with quantum computing?

~~~
neltnerb
The paper is entirely theoretical and controls the polarity by mechanically
changing the distance between mirrors. I would say that this has a roughly 0%
chance of having any direct practical impact in the next 20 years.

Here's an introduction to what the general field might give you:
[http://nelson.mit.edu/blog/terahertz-polaritonics-and-
techni...](http://nelson.mit.edu/blog/terahertz-polaritonics-and-technique-
development)

This field is pretty new relative to other options which have similar
technological advantages, the stuff I learned about plasmonics in grad school
was quite primitive despite being the state of the art 15 years ago. Whereas
photonics and spintronics are much better established. I'd personally focus on
graphene, single electron transistors, and photonics (with perhaps plasmonics
for interfacing) as the most likely candidates for real-world improvements in
the next 10 years.

------
ianai
They’re modifying the chirality of polaritons. Never heard of polaritons
before now.

Google: Polaritons are hybrid particles made up of a photon strongly coupled
to an electric dipole

~~~
_Microft
There are many more of these so-called quasiparticles - and even crazier ones
on top of that. You might enjoy having a look at
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quasiparticle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quasiparticle)
or
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_quasiparticles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_quasiparticles).

------
mrtnmcc
"The researchers show that by embedding the honeycomb metasurface between two
reflecting mirrors and changing the distance between them, one can tune the
fundamental properties of the Dirac polaritons in a simple, controllable and
reversible way."

That doesn't sound so simple.

------
mem0r1
Polaritons are quasi particles in the sense of solid-state
physics,quantizations of lattice oscillations „induced“ by transversally
polarizized photons. These are not particles in the sense of the standard
model of particle physics.

------
franciscrick1
One thing I am reminded of as I look at this page is that university sites
almost never have advertisements on them. Can't say I miss phys.org or
iflscience.

~~~
iagooar
And that's why they load near instantly. Wish more of the web was like them or
Hacker News.

