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Can Light Be Stopped? Scientists Say Yes!

Can Light Be Stopped? Scientists Say Yes!

While the speed of light in a vacuum is a universal constant, scientists have successfully brought photons to a complete standstill, capturing and storing light for up to a minute before re-releasing it.

This remarkable feat is typically achieved using extremely cold atomic gases, such as a Bose-Einstein condensate of rubidium atoms, which act as a quantum memory. A laser pulse is shone into the ultracold gas, and through precise quantum manipulation with control lasers, the light's energy and quantum state are imprinted onto the atomic spins. The light itself vanishes, but its information is stored within the atoms. Later, by applying another control pulse, the stored information can be retrieved, effectively reconstructing and re-emitting the original light pulse.
🔗 Stopped light🔗 One-minute light storage in an atomic ensemble

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