Max: Atoms function as light-trappers and transporters
Atoms function as light-trappers and transporters - tech - 07 February 2007 - New Scientist Tech
A pulse of light can be stopped, transported, and restarted again using a cloud of super-cold atoms, US researchers have shown. The technique could ultimately be used for advanced computing devices or gravity detectors.
The experiments demonstrate physicists' increasing ability to manipulate light. Being able to control it in this way could be useful for optical or quantum computers, the team suggests.
'The first time I read this paper, I didn't believe it,' says Michael Fleischhauer, a theoretical physicist at the University of Kaiserslautern in Germany. 'Even though theory tells us it should be possible, actually doing it is something else.'
Naomi Ginsberg, Sean Garner and Lene Hau of Harvard University, US, used a method first developed in 2001 to imprint a pulse of laser light onto a collection of sodium atoms cooled to just above absolute zero.
A pulse of light can be stopped, transported, and restarted again using a cloud of super-cold atoms, US researchers have shown. The technique could ultimately be used for advanced computing devices or gravity detectors.
The experiments demonstrate physicists' increasing ability to manipulate light. Being able to control it in this way could be useful for optical or quantum computers, the team suggests.
'The first time I read this paper, I didn't believe it,' says Michael Fleischhauer, a theoretical physicist at the University of Kaiserslautern in Germany. 'Even though theory tells us it should be possible, actually doing it is something else.'
Naomi Ginsberg, Sean Garner and Lene Hau of Harvard University, US, used a method first developed in 2001 to imprint a pulse of laser light onto a collection of sodium atoms cooled to just above absolute zero.
posted by Max Dobberstein at 2/07/2007 11:59:00 PM
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