The light from the seed beam could switch this condensate between two measurable states that serve as zero and one. The cluster of exciton-polaritons can form so-called Bose-Einstein condensates, collections of particles that each behave like a single atom. This can give rise to short-lived quasiparticles known as exciton-polaritons. When the pump laser shines on the microcavity, its photons can couple strongly with excitons (electrons bound to their positively charged counterparts, holes) within the cavity's material. Two lasers help operate the device-a bright pump laser and a very weak seed laser.
The result is a microscopic cavity designed to keep incoming light trapped inside for as long as possible to help it couple with the cavity's material. The new device relies on a 35-nanometer-wide organic semiconductor polymer film sandwiched between two highly reflective mirrors. Optical computers that replace conventional transistors with optical switches could theoretically operate more quickly than regular computers, as photons travel at the speed of light, while electrons, typically, don’t. A new optical switch is, at 1 trillion operations per second, between 100 and 1,000 times faster than today's leading commercial electronic transistors, research that may one day help lead to a new generation of computers based on light instead of electricity, say scientists in Russia and at IBM.Ĭomputers typically represent data as ones and zeroes by switching transistors between one electric state and the other.
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