One of the key characteristics of the quantum world is that light and matter can combine. This quantum electrodynamics (QED) condition is central the transmission and reflection of light through a solid.
A photon can be absorbed by an electron and then reemitted. The time that it takes for the electron to process a photon is called the capture time. The capture time of the photon is important to the LENR+ reaction because while the photon and electron are combined, the electron becomes a boson with spin of 1. This enables the electron/photon pair to form a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) because when the pair remains coupled the bosonic nature makes BEC’s possible. When paired, the photon also reduces the weight of the electron. This very low weight enables BEC formation at very high temperatures. Both the coupling time and strength can be substantially increased by engineering optimal nanostructures. One attempt at this engineering effort succeeded in increasing the coupling strength by 16 times over the bulk condition. >From the referenced paper: “Additional surface passivation that preserves the polaritonic nature of the excitations at small nanowire diameters allows us to push the observed vacuum Rabi splitting to values of up to 200 meV in comparison to bulk values of 82 meV. These results provide new avenues to achieve very high coupling strengths (beyond bulk) potentially enabling application of exciting phenomena such as Bose-Einstein condensation of polaritons, efficient light-emitting diodes and lasers,” Because one ev is translated to 10,000 K in temperature, this 200 meV value corresponds to a maximum BEC temperature of 2000K. Backup info for tis post can be found at phys.org/pdf227265287.pdf Lighten up: Polaritons with tunable photon-exciton coherence and One-dimensional polaritons with size-tunable and enhanced coupling strengths in semiconductor nanowires www.pnas.org/content/early/2011/05/23/1102212108.full.pdf or www.pnas.org/content/108/25/10050.full
