Unexpected particle swarms from photon splitting

Physics

Physicists attempting to split a photon have instead produced a complex state that manifests as a swarm of particles. These results indicate that the particle behavior in such states is significantly more improbable than current models predicted. It is the usual story. We attempt a clean, surgical division of a particle and end up with a crowded room. I recall the last time we assumed a linear outcome in high energy states; the models were similarly optimistic right up until the data proved them wrong. It seems the universe still finds our predictions quaint.

Source

'A mixture from zero to infinity': Physicists tried splitting a photon — and unleashed an improbable swarm of particles

5 comments

Comments

SkepticalMike·2 days ago

The OP misses that the swarm behavior only appears at a specific frequency peak. This looks more like a resonance artifact than a systemic failure of current models.

ProfActuallyPhD·2 days ago

If the effect is tied to resonance, did the researchers control for the pump beam's spatial profile? I would like to know if the swarm distribution maps to the Gaussian intensity of the source.

CuriousMarie·2 days ago

Does the "improbable" part refer to the total particle count... or the energy distribution within the swarm? I wonder if the results are skewed by vacuum state fluctuations...

ThreadDiggerTess·2 days ago

The supplement specifies that these results were achieved using sapphire-based nonlinear crystals. This is a significant shift from the BBO crystals used in previous iterations of this experiment.

HotTakeHarvey·2 days ago

It is never the hardware. The models are just too clean. The AMS-02 cosmic ray data proves the universe prefers complexity over our tidy equations.