Jan. 18 — Physicists say they can effectively catch a light pulse in a bottle, hold onto it and release it, in an operation described as slowing light to a dead stop. It’s actually the information about the light wave that’s being captured, the researchers say, and such techniques could be applied to a future generation of quantum computers and ultrasecure communication devices.
LIGHT NORMALLY moves through a vacuum at about 186,000 miles per second. Nothing in the universe moves faster, and Albert Einstein theorized that nothing ever could.
However, light waves can slow down as they pass through a medium. Last year a research team at the Rowland Institute for Science and Harvard University, headed by Danish physicist Lene Hau, reported that they had brought light waves down to a 1 mph crawl by putting them through a specially prepared haze of ultracold sodium atoms.
Now reports are emerging that the same group and another team at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, led by Ronald Walsworth and Mikhail Lukin, have “stored” pulses of light in separate experiments.
The Harvard-Smithsonian results are being published in the Jan. 29 issue of Physical Review Letters — and that paper refers to Hau’s success, even though her results have yet to be published. The achievements came to light in Thursday’s New York Times.
SPIN CONTROL
Both teams accomplished what sounds like an impossible task: slowing down a light pulse so much that it appears to fade and stop, then starting it up again on demand. However, Lukin and a colleague, David Phillips, told MSNBC.com that the process is less crazy and more complicated than it sounds.
The experiments don’t involve stopping the actual photons, or particles of light. Instead, information about the light wave is gradually transferred to rubidium atoms within a carefully prepared glass chamber, and then turned back into a replica of the original light wave. That’s the real trick.
Want to learn more?
http://www.msnbc.com/news/242698.asp
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-Administrator / Owner
"Everything was true. God was an astronaut. Oz really is over the
rainbow. ...and Midian is where the monsters live." -Nightbreed
LIGHT NORMALLY moves through a vacuum at about 186,000 miles per second. Nothing in the universe moves faster, and Albert Einstein theorized that nothing ever could.
However, light waves can slow down as they pass through a medium. Last year a research team at the Rowland Institute for Science and Harvard University, headed by Danish physicist Lene Hau, reported that they had brought light waves down to a 1 mph crawl by putting them through a specially prepared haze of ultracold sodium atoms.
Now reports are emerging that the same group and another team at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, led by Ronald Walsworth and Mikhail Lukin, have “stored” pulses of light in separate experiments.
The Harvard-Smithsonian results are being published in the Jan. 29 issue of Physical Review Letters — and that paper refers to Hau’s success, even though her results have yet to be published. The achievements came to light in Thursday’s New York Times.
SPIN CONTROL
Both teams accomplished what sounds like an impossible task: slowing down a light pulse so much that it appears to fade and stop, then starting it up again on demand. However, Lukin and a colleague, David Phillips, told MSNBC.com that the process is less crazy and more complicated than it sounds.
The experiments don’t involve stopping the actual photons, or particles of light. Instead, information about the light wave is gradually transferred to rubidium atoms within a carefully prepared glass chamber, and then turned back into a replica of the original light wave. That’s the real trick.
Want to learn more?
http://www.msnbc.com/news/242698.asp
------------------
-Administrator / Owner
"Everything was true. God was an astronaut. Oz really is over the
rainbow. ...and Midian is where the monsters live." -Nightbreed