Optics and circuits is an incredibly hot area where investors spend billions to make progress. Washington Post now reports about how scientists has made great progress toward a practical use of light, and then slow light. The problem with light, unlike electrons, is that it’s hard to control the speed and flow, especially if you want the information carried by the light to remain the same while adjusting the speed. Scientists at University of Rochester has managed to do this by sending light through a metal gas.
“Howell and his colleagues created a four-inch-long chamber filled with cesium gas heated to about 212 degrees Fahrenheit. When they sent pulses of laser light through that gas, the cesium atoms put the brakes on the leading edge of that wave, creating a photonic traffic jam.”
The properties of the light remained unchanged but the light only traveled at a lower speed through the gas. A great advantage with this method is that they’ve managed to slow down light consisting out of a single photon, which hasn’t been possible previously. Combine this with the fact that they can control how much they want to slow down the speed of light by simply raising or lowering the temperature of the Cesium gas.
