December 10, 2003

Light slowed to a standstill

from the New Scientist bq. A pulse of light has been stopped in its tracks with all its photons intact, reveal US physicists. bq. In a vacuum, light travels at the phenomenal speed of 300,000,000 metres per second. Scientists can exploit the way that the electric and magnetic fields in light interact with matter to slow it down. bq. Over the last few years, scientists have become masters of the light beam. Speeds of a few metres per second are now reached routinely in laboratories around the world. It is rather harder, however, to stop light completely and previous attempts have halted light but lost its photons in the process. bq. Mikhail Lukin and colleagues at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts managed to stop light without this loss by firing a short burst of red laser light into a gas of hot rubidium atoms. The full text of the paper (6-page PDF) is here Posted by DaveH at December 10, 2003 10:57 AM