Light stopped for over a second

From Wikinews, the free news source you can write!

Wednesday, September 14, 2005

Light has been stopped in its tracks for more than one second, setting a new record over a thousand times longer than the previous one.

Researchers at the Australian National University used a technique called electromagnetically induced transparency in which a beam of laser light puts the atoms in a solid sample into a state in which a signal light pulse can be trapped.

Most previous stopped-light demonstrations have used gases rather than solid materials. Light had previously been stopped in a solid (yttrium-silicate doped with atoms of praseodymium), but only for a few milliseconds.

Although the efficiency of the storage was low in this experiment, the researchers believe they can improve the efficiency by using a thicker sample and by increasing the concentration of praseodymium in the sample. The technique could be useful in quantum information processing applications such as quantum computers.

Sources

• J. J. Longdell, E. Fraval, M. J. Sellars, and N. B. Manson "[1]" – Physical Review Letters, August 2, 2005
  

Share this:

This article features first-hand journalism by Wikinews members. See the collaboration page for more details.

This page is archived, and is no longer publicly editable. Got a correction? Add the template {{editprotected}} to the talk page along with your corrections, and it will be brought to the attention of the administrators. Please note that due to our archival policy, we will not alter or update the content of articles that are archived, but will only accept requests to make grammatical and formatting corrections. Note that some listed sources or external links may no longer be available online due to age.