Scientists Take First Ever Photo of Light as Both a Wave and a Particle

In a landmark achievement, scientists at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL) in Lausanne, Switzerland have taken the first photograph of light behaving as both a wave and a particle.

This experiment by the EPFL scientists is the first to capture both natures of light at the same time.

A research team led by Fabrizio Carbone at EPFL carried out the experiment with a clever twist: using electrons to image light. Carbone led the research team that designed the technique that photographed the breakthrough image, said a story in Newsweek.

The scientists shot a stream of electrons close to a nanowire using it to image the standing wave of light. As the electrons interacted with the confined light on the nanowire, they either sped up or slowed down.

Using the ultrafast microscope to image the position where this change in speed occurred, Carbone's team could now visualize the standing wave, which acts as a fingerprint of the wave-nature of light.

While this phenomenon shows the wave-like nature of light, it simultaneously demonstrated its particle aspect, as well.

As the electrons pass close to the standing wave of light, they "hit" the light's particles or photons. This collision affects their speed, making them move faster or slower.

This change in speed appears as an exchange of energy packets or "quanta" between electrons and photons. The very occurrence of these energy packets shows that the light on the nanowire behaves as a particle.

"This experiment demonstrates that, for the first time ever, we can film quantum mechanics-and its paradoxical nature-directly," said Carbone in a statement released by the EPFL.

"Being able to image and control quantum phenomena at the nanometer scale like this opens up a new route towards quantum computing."

The breakthrough work was published in Nature Communications.