Massive photons in an artificial magnetic field

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An international research collaboration that combined academics from Poland, the UK and Russia has created a two-dimensional system – a thin optical cavity filled with liquid crystal – in which they trapped photons with unique properties. The localized photons behaved like massive particles. It was found that as the properties of the cavity were modified by an external voltage, the photons behaved like quasiparticles endowed with a magnetic moment, called “spin”, under the influence of an artificial magnetic field. The research has been published in Science, to read it follow the link.