Light one hundred times slower
2005/03/22 Rementeria Argote, Nagore - Elhuyar Zientziaren Komunikazioa
A pair of physicists manage to reduce the speed of a laser pulse a hundred times. To do this they have passed the light through a microbarruniva nanosare.
This nanosare is made of photonic crystal, that is, it is a structure that controls the light and has the material ordered periodically, so that the ray, as it passes from one material to another, finds a different dielectric constant, which hinders, say, the trajectory of the light wave.
However, it must be clarified that two types of speeds
are distinguished: a daphase speed (wave speed) and another group speed (pulse speed, that is, lightning speed of different wavelengths
that go to the same pulse). What they have slowed down is group speed.
