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So they're converting light into phonons and back and using the slower propagation of phonons as a buffer in an otherwise photonic processor? Clever! For those

So they're converting light into phonons and back and using the slower propagation of phonons as a buffer in an otherwise photonic processor? Clever! For those wondering, phonons are lattice vibration quasiparticles, they aren't elementary particles.

QAPereo 9y ago
To anyone without a physics background, And just in case the phrase lattice vibration quasiparticle doesn't leap out of you, by way of analogy consider ripples in a pond. Particles are well-defined ripples which propagate while virtual particles our secondary effects of interaction between particles or the background "water" itself. Meanwhile quasiparticles in this case are things which behave very much like the first kind of ripple, within the context of a solid crystal lattice.