Rainbow trapping in light pulses
Thursday, July 15, 2010 - 10:15
in Physics & Chemistry
Over the past decade, scientists have succeeded in slowing pulses of light down to zero speed by letting separate frequency components of the pulse conspire in such a way that a receptive medium through which the pulse is passing can host the information stored in the pulse but not actually absorb the pulse's energy. Trapping light means either stopping the light temporally or confining the light in space. Scientists have also been able to trap a light pulse in a tiny enclosure bounded by metamaterials; the light pulse retains its form but is kept from moving away...