I am not sure what you find puzzling about that article?
The light saber from starwars is a bit over the top what they are doing is making a different form of matter here are less going for headlines reports of the same thing
http://phys.org/news/2013-09-scientists-never-before-seen.htmlSo again what they are doing is playing with QM to break classic physics rules
Here is what they do=>What we have done is create a special type of medium in which photons interact with each other so strongly that they begin to act as though they have mass, and they bind together to form molecules. This type of photonic bound state has been discussed theoretically for quite a while, but until now it hadn't been observed.
Understand it is a theoretical thing that QM says will happen something classic physics would never expect .. NOT EVER UNDER CLASSIC PHYSICS.Are you understanding this it is proof of QM being right because it predicted the effect.
UNDERSTAND???????
Now here is the explaining for classic physics to try and make sense of it=> "When the photon exits the medium, its identity is preserved," Lukin said. "It's the same effect we see with refraction of light in a water glass. The light enters the water, it hands off part of its energy to the medium, and inside it exists as light and matter coupled together, but when it exits, it's still light. The process that takes place is the same it's just a bit more extreme – the light is slowed considerably, and a lot more energy is given away than during refraction."
AGAIN BE CAREFUL IT IS AN ATTEMPT TO SIMPLIFY QM FOR LAYMAN (and some dropkick astronomers who only understand classic physics) 
Now the reason=> The reason they form the never-before-seen molecules?
=>An effect called a Rydberg blockade, Lukin said, which states that when an atom is excited, nearby atoms cannot be excited to the same degree. In practice, the effect means that as two photons enter the atomic cloud, the first excites an atom, but must move forward before the second photon can excite nearby atoms.
HERE SO YOU FINALLY GET IThttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rydberg_atom=>A Rydberg atom is an excited atom with one or more electrons that have a very high principal quantum number. These atoms have a number of peculiar properties including an exaggerated response to electric and magnetic fields.
=>The only truly stable state of an atom is the ground state with n = 1. The study of Rydberg states requires a reliable technique for exciting ground state atoms to states with a large value of n.
NOT EXACTLY SOMETHING YOU ARE GOING TO FIND IN NATURE YOU WILL FIND SOME IN SPACE BUT PLASMA PROCESS... WE CREATED THESE THINGS USING QM IN A LAB.=>The density within interstellar gas clouds is typically many orders of magnitude lower than the best laboratory vacuums attainable on Earth, allowing Rydberg atoms to persist for long periods of time without being ionised by collisions or electric and magnetic fields. As a result of this longevity and the abundance of hydrogen it is particularly common for astronomers to observe radiation from the heavens at a frequency of 2.4 GHz, now known to correspond to the hydrogen n = 109 to n = 108 transition. Such a highly excited hydrogen atom on Earth would be ionised almost immediately as the binding energy would be significantly below thermal energies.
See the problem classic physics can't make these on earth because they can't build a vacuum remotely as good as space.=>Strongly interacting Rydberg atoms also feature quantum critical behavior, which makes them interesting to study on their own
That's why they were playing with it and created it by using QM under very cold conditions.So is it clear the whole process start to end is playing with QM to break classic physics I warned you about this you give me any rule I am pretty sure we can break it except conservation of energy.
HOW ANY OF THAT HAS ANYTHING TO DO WITH YOUR THEORY IS BEYOND ME.IT'S SOMETHING WE MAKE IN A LAB AND IT SHOWS SCIENCE UNDERSTANDS A HELL OF A LOT.
