Slow Light: From Basics to Future Prospects
How can the speed of light be reduced a millionfold, and why does this matter? The answers to these questions are intriguing and important.
Daniel J. Gauthier, Duke University, Alexander L. Gaeta, Cornell University, and Robert W. Boyd, University of Rochester
The speed of light in a vacuum is a quantity that defies human comprehension. A flash of light travels across a football field so quickly that it appears instantaneous; it is only through the use of modern high-speed photoreceivers that we can measure the propagation time delay. But now, in several laboratories around the world, light speed is approaching the human scale.
Recent research from the nonlinear and quantum optics communities has demonstrated exquisite control over the speed of a pulse of light as it propagates through a material system.1 It is possible to control the speed of a pulse of light from its vacuum speed — 3 × 108 m/s — all the way down to the speed of a good bicyclist — a few meters per second. In part, such efforts have been motivated by the need for optically controllable pulse delays for applications such as optical buffering, data synchronization, optical memory and signal processing (see “Toward Optical Packet Switching,” page 84)...
The complete article appears in the March 2006 issue of Photonics Spectra. If you do not have a copy of this issue,
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