Photons could be ‘split’ in two to create a weird new form of light

Physicists have shown that ‘splitting’ particles of light into so-called Majorana bosons, a feat long thought to be mathematically impossible, may be achievable

By Leah Crane

A type of light that was previously thought to be impossible may be real after all. Creating it would involve “splitting” a single photon of light between two locations to produce particles called Majorana bosons.

In 1937, Italian physicist Ettore Majorana suggested that some electrons, which fall into a category of particles called fermions, could be split into two theoretical particles called Majorana fermions. This would not involve physically breaking the electrons in half, but rather using quantum effects to give the …