I was astonished to learn a few weeks ago that physicists at Harvard and at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Aspeciallycs, using sprepared prepared gases, had succeeded in slowing light down to a crawl, and finally a dead stop.
Seminal proposals for the realisation in slow-light systems also exist27,28,29,30.
The latter can be done by tuning the two photon detunings using standard optical methods, like AC stark shifting used in slow-light experiments12,13.
Our work proposes the alternative way to acquire the tunable EIT-like effect and these results reflect the possibility for achieving in slow-light devices and novel sensors.
We would like to highlight here that the usual experimental difficulties, in realising the photonic nonlinear interaction in slow-light systems for more complex many body simulations, do not exist in this case.
M. D. Stenner, M. A. Neifeld, Z. Zhu, A. M. C. Dawes, and D. J. Gauthier, 'Distortion management in slow-light pulse delay,' Opt.
E. Cabrera-Granado and D. J. Gauthier, 'Recent advancements in SBS Slow Light,' an invited article in Opt.
Simulation results demonstrate that a refractive index sensitivity of 450 nm/RIU and a quality factor of 1105 can be obtained in the slow light engineered PC cavity.
Physicist Oskar Painter and colleagues at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena have now demonstrated slow light in a medium that should be far easier to integrate: a nanoscale silicon chip.
Y. Zhu, E. Cabrera-Granado, O.G. Calderon, S. Melle, Y. Okawachi, A.L. Gaeta, D.J. Gauthier, 'Competition between the Modulation Instability and Stimulated Brillouin Scattering in a Broadband Slow Light Device,' J. Opt. 12, 104019 (2010).
