Quantum state at room temperature: Warsaw team reports light-based supersolid

Physicists in Poland, Switzerland and France have reported a "supersolid", a quantum state of matter that is ordered like a crystal yet flows without friction, working at room temperature rather than in deep freeze. The study, published in the journal Science Advances by researchers from the University of Warsaw, the Military University of Technology in Warsaw, IBM Research Zurich and the French research agency CNRS, was announced by the University of Warsaw and covered by science news services from 4 November 2026. The result became one of the UK's trending searches on 9 November.

A supersolid sounds like a contradiction. A solid has a fixed, repeating structure, like the atoms in a crystal. A superfluid is a quantum liquid that flows with no friction at all. A supersolid has both properties at once. Physicists predicted such states decades ago, but laboratory versions have so far mostly been made from clouds of atoms cooled to a tiny fraction of a degree above absolute zero, which needs large and costly equipment.

The Warsaw-led team took a different route. Light trapped between two mirrors in a microscopic cavity can mix so strongly with the electrons and "holes" in a semiconductor that the two behave as one particle, called an exciton-polariton. Many such particles can fall into the same quantum state, known as a Bose-Einstein condensate. The researchers say that in their liquid-crystal cavity this condensate arranged itself into a regular, striped pattern while keeping its frictionless flow: the signature of a supersolid. Because the particles are part light, the effect can be seen directly in the light that leaves the sample.

The practical point is temperature. A quantum effect that works at room temperature, or warmer, does not need cryogenic cooling, which is one of the biggest barriers to taking quantum physics out of the laboratory. The researchers say their liquid-crystal cavities also allow the system to be tuned electrically. They suggest the work could lead to ultrafast light-based devices, accelerators for neuromorphic computing (hardware that mimics how the brain processes signals) and very sensitive optical sensors. These are the researchers' proposals: no such device has been built, and the state they observed does not last long because the material wears out.

For Indian readers in physics, photonics and engineering, the study shows where quantum research is heading: towards materials and devices that work in ordinary conditions. Organic semiconductors and liquid crystals are already used in displays, which is one reason scientists see this route as promising.

Peepals calculation: Absolute zero is −273.15°C. The cavities' reported limit of about 60°C is therefore roughly 333 degrees above absolute zero (60 + 273.15 = 333.15 kelvin). Even normal room temperature, about 20°C, is around 293 kelvin. Our calculation from the reported figures.

Short-term: The result gives physicists a simpler, cheaper platform to study supersolids. The team plans to examine quantum vortices, tiny whirlpools that appeared as flaws in the striped patterns.

Long-term: If the state can be made to last, room-temperature quantum light systems could feed into optical computing and sensing research. That depends on solving the degradation problem and on further independent work.

Who is affected: Researchers in quantum physics, photonics and materials science, and companies working on light-based computing and sensors.

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