Rydberg Polarons

An international team of physicists have successfully created a giant atom and filled it with ordinary atoms, creating a new state of matter termed Rydberg polarons.

The atoms are held together by a weak bond. They are created at very cold temperatures. This weakly bound state of matter is an exciting new possibility of investigating the physics of ultracold atoms.

Rydberg polarons were created using ideas from Bose Einstein Condensation and Rydberg atoms.

Rydberg polarons can be used in the field of cosmology which studies the evolution of universe. The universe is believed to be filled with a mysterious ‘dark matter’ which exerts a gravitational force on other matter. This dark matter is believed to be a Bose Einstein Condensate which is composed of an as-yet-unknown type of particle. This experiment can suggest ways to detect it. It will help us to unlock the history of universe in a more comprehensive way. [Reference]