Scientists from Poland have helped demonstrate one of quantum physics’ most extraordinary phenomena: a state in which matter displays properties normally associated with both a crystal and a frictionless fluid.
The international research team, including scientists from the University of Warsaw and Poland’s Military University of Technology, observed a supersolid quantum state at room temperature, using a specially designed system combining light and matter.
The findings were published in the scientific journal Science Advances on 16 October 2026 and announced by the University of Warsaw on 3 November.
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The achievement is particularly significant because the experimental system can be controlled using an electrical voltage, offering researchers a flexible new way to investigate unusual quantum phenomena without cooling their equipment to temperatures close to absolute zero.
The project brought together researchers from Poland, IBM Research in Switzerland, France’s National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) and other European institutions.
How can something behave like a solid and a fluid?
In everyday life, solids and liquids behave very differently.
A solid has a relatively fixed structure. A liquid can flow and take the shape of its container.
But quantum physics allows more unusual possibilities.
A supersolid is a quantum state that combines two seemingly contradictory characteristics: the organised structure associated with a crystal and the collective behaviour associated with superfluidity.
Superfluidity is a remarkable phenomenon in which a quantum fluid can move without the ordinary resistance caused by viscosity.
In a supersolid, particles or other quantum components organise themselves into a regularly repeating pattern while retaining the collective quantum properties associated with superfluid behaviour.
The concept has fascinated physicists for decades.
Theoretical proposals emerged in the twentieth century, but convincing experimental demonstrations only became possible much later.
Researchers first observed supersolid behaviour in ultracold atomic systems in 2017, using sophisticated apparatus operating close to absolute zero — approximately −273°C.
Since then, scientists have developed other experimental approaches, including systems based on light interacting with matter.
The new Polish-involved research advances this growing field by demonstrating supersolid behaviour in a different kind of device that works at room temperature.
A quantum fluid made from light and matter
The researchers did not transform an ordinary piece of solid material into a liquid.
Instead, they studied unusual quantum entities called exciton polaritons.
These are hybrid quasiparticles created when light strongly interacts with electronic excitations inside a material.
Under suitable conditions, large numbers of these quasiparticles can enter a shared quantum state known as a Bose–Einstein condensate.
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Although the individual polaritons exist for extremely short periods, measured in trillionths of a second, they can briefly exhibit collective behaviour resembling a quantum fluid.
To investigate this phenomenon, the scientists developed a microscopic optical cavity.
The device contained a specially designed liquid crystal and layers of an organic semiconductor, allowing light and matter to interact strongly under carefully controlled conditions.
Unlike many traditional experiments involving Bose–Einstein condensates, the system did not require temperatures approaching absolute zero.
The University of Warsaw’s Faculty of Physics reported that the device enabled the researchers to investigate this quantum state under ordinary room-temperature laboratory conditions.
Professor Wiktor Piecek of the Military University of Technology, whose group developed the liquid-crystal structures, said the microcavities themselves could operate at temperatures approaching 60°C.
That is a measure of the technology’s operating potential, rather than a claim that the principal supersolid observations were performed at that temperature.
The remarkable patterns that revealed the phenomenon
One of the most striking aspects of the experiment was how the researchers identified the unusual quantum state.
When the microscopic system was excited by laser pulses, it emitted light containing regularly spaced bright and dark bands.
These patterns indicated that the condensate had spontaneously developed a repeating structure resembling the spatial organisation of a crystal.
But the researchers observed something even more revealing.
Each time a fresh laser pulse created the condensate, the bands could appear in a different position.
The pattern was not simply being imposed by a fixed structure inside the device.
Instead, the quantum system was selecting its own arrangement.
Physicists describe this behaviour as spontaneous symmetry breaking.
In simple terms, a system that could settle into several equivalent arrangements selects one particular arrangement each time the quantum state forms.
That ability to develop an ordered structure spontaneously is an important part of the evidence supporting supersolidity.
The experiment also revealed quantum vortices — distinctive structures associated with collective fluid-like behaviour.
The team’s published findings combine these observations with theoretical modelling and measurements of the system’s optical properties.
The researchers interpret the evidence as demonstrating a supersolid phase in their exciton-polariton condensate.
However, the scientific paper also acknowledges that the evidence for superfluid behaviour would benefit from further quantitative investigation.
The Polish contribution to an international discovery
Scientists from the University of Warsaw and the Military University of Technology made important contributions to the project.
The study’s first author, Dr Marcin Muszyński, carried out research associated with the University of Warsaw’s Faculty of Physics. He is now a postdoctoral researcher at the City College of New York.
Other Warsaw-based contributors included Piotr Kapuściński, Przemysław Oliwa, Barbara Piętka and Professor Jacek Szczytko.
At the Military University of Technology, researchers helped develop the liquid-crystal structures and photonic components used in the experiment.
The Polish team included Professor Wiktor Piecek, Rafał Mazur, Przemysław Morawiak and Przemysław Kula.
The work was genuinely international.
Some of the most important experimental measurements were performed at IBM Research Zurich, where researchers deposited semiconductor films onto photonic structures prepared by their Polish collaborators.
Scientists from France’s CNRS provided theoretical expertise, while researchers affiliated with institutions in Germany and the United Kingdom also contributed to the published study.
The project illustrates how advances in modern physics often depend on specialist laboratories combining different areas of expertise.
In this case, the collaboration brought together materials science, photonics, liquid-crystal technology, quantum theory and experimental physics.
A race against time in the laboratory
The experiment presented an unusual practical challenge.
The organic semiconductor used in the device gradually reacted with the liquid crystal.
That meant the researchers had only a limited period in which to complete their measurements after assembling a sample.
According to the University of Warsaw, the experimental team had to plan the sequence of tests carefully because the samples could deteriorate within hours.
Repeating a measurement could require the researchers to manufacture a completely new device.
The short-lived nature of the quantum state created another challenge.
Individual polaritons survive for just a few picoseconds, requiring precisely timed laser excitation and sensitive optical measurements.
Yet the combination of equipment and materials allowed the team to capture individual instances of the condensate forming its distinctive striped patterns.
These measurements were crucial for demonstrating that the patterns emerged spontaneously rather than being permanently fixed by imperfections in the sample.
Why the room-temperature result matters
The main achievement is not simply that researchers observed an exotic quantum phenomenon.
They demonstrated it in a system whose properties can be adjusted electronically.
Applying an electrical voltage changes the optical behaviour of the liquid-crystal microcavity, allowing scientists to explore different conditions without rebuilding the entire experimental setup.
That flexibility could make the platform useful for investigating how unusual quantum states emerge, change and respond to external influences.
Many experiments involving exotic quantum phases require costly and technically demanding cooling equipment.
Systems capable of displaying related effects at room temperature offer researchers additional ways to investigate quantum behaviour under more accessible laboratory conditions.
The University of Warsaw has identified several potential long-term research directions, including ultrafast optical components, highly sensitive sensors and specialised computing systems based on light.
Such applications remain possibilities rather than demonstrated technologies.
The experiment has not produced a commercial quantum computer, a frictionless material suitable for everyday use or a ready-made industrial device.
Its immediate importance lies in providing scientists with another experimental platform for exploring the interaction between light, matter and collective quantum behaviour.
Part of a rapidly developing field
Supersolidity is no longer confined to theoretical predictions or experiments using only ultracold atoms.
In March 2025, researchers published evidence of supersolid behaviour in photonic-crystal polariton condensates in Nature.
A separate study published in Nature Nanotechnology in March 2026 also demonstrated room-temperature supersolidity using a hybrid perovskite and nanograting system.
The latest Polish-involved work is therefore not the first observation of supersolidity at room temperature.
Its distinctive contribution lies in the liquid-crystal microcavity design, the ability to adjust its optical properties electrically and the detailed evidence of spontaneous ordering in the resulting condensate.
Those advances provide another way to explore one of quantum physics’ most unusual states.
For the Polish researchers involved, the publication represents an important contribution to an international field in which new discoveries increasingly depend on the combination of advanced materials and precise control of light.
What once appeared to be a contradiction — a quantum system exhibiting both crystal-like order and fluid-like behaviour — is becoming something scientists can create, observe and investigate in the laboratory.
And researchers working at two Polish universities have helped take that investigation another step forward.
