After 80 years of testing, a team of physicists from Imperial College London (United Kingdom) has discovered how to create matter from light . This finding represents a milestone in physics: testing the reality of a theory formulated in 1934 by scientists Breit and Wheeler.
Both physicists suggested that it should be possible to convert light to matter by simultaneously destroying two light particles (photons) to create an electron and a positron, which has since been the simplest method of converting light to matter. Now, this theory is a reality thanks to the demonstration carried out at Imperial College London and which has been published in the journal Nature Photonics .
The study tells of a high-energy physics experiment that could explain some of the greatest yet unsolved mysteries of physics , such as the origin process of the universe, in one of the simplest ways in which light and matter they can interact.
“Although all physicists accept that the theory is true, when Breit and Wheeler first proposed it, they told me that they did not expect it to be shown in the laboratory today; almost 80 years later, we proved them wrong, “says Steve Rose of the Physics Department at Imperial College and a co-author of the study.
The way to achieve this went through two main steps: first, using an extremely powerful high-intensity laser to accelerate the electrons to almost the speed of light, and then launching those electrons at a slab of gold to create a beam of photons a billion times more energetic than visible light; second, with a “hohlraum” (empty room) the scientists fired a high-energy laser at the inner surface of this gold in order to create a field of thermal radiation , thus generating light similar to that emitted by stars. Then the photon beam obtained during the first phase would have to be directed through the center of the container used in the second, causing the photons arising from both sources to collide and form electrons and positrons, the creation of which could be detected by the experiment .
The same authors of the study claim to have been surprised after discovering that this process provided the ideal conditions for the creation of a photon collider .
