Talk:Slow light

message: One of the very few (3) cited articles "IBM's new photonic wave-guide". Nature, November 2004 does not exist, not only on that month's edition but nowhere in "Nature", nor in any other publication. Who invented it? The false information propagated from wiki to many other sites.  I did not cancel it, let the others to check further, maybe is just a wrong reference and the manuscript was published somewhere I could not reach.   — Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.206.81.47 (talk) 18:38, 5 July 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  wrong reference 

message: I'd like to see this article expanded with some information about stopping light. From what I've read on various websites this is done with Bose–Einstein condensate. I've found some sources about it , but I hardly know anything about the subject so I'm not too eager on adding it myself.
Also some (past) records on minimum speed achieved would be nice to have added in. - Dammit 17:57, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  request for expansion 

message: When light travels through a medium, its velocity decreases. But what about once it exits that medium...does its velocity "pick back up again?" Does its speed go back toward c?
:Light always travels at the fastest it can, for each medium it is always at its fastest, so if you have a pane of slow glass in vacuum, the moment light leaves the pane it's already traveling at the full speed of light. --TiagoTiago (talk) 22:51, 14 November 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  What Happens After the Slowdown 

message: With some dithering, I deleted this paragraph: "Slow glass also appears in Unknown Worlds Of Science Fiction comics (1975). In these stories, the glass originates in the future, and its ability to show "...scenes from various locations in time, space and other dimensions..." is used as a framing device for the comic's stories. It's use was directly inspired by Bob Shaw's story.".  The reason I deleted it is that, if the piece of glass shows other locations in "space and other dimensions," it clearly isn't slow glass, but something quite different. (also, I note that the link is non-existent).  Geoffrey.landis (talk) 15:40, 20 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  cut Unknown Worlds reference. 

message: I have removed this paragraph:
: In military use, stopping or considerably slowing down light could be used to camouflage vehicles. If the light were stopped, the vehicle would be invisible and would only appear as a blind spot in the eye of an observer. If the light were slowed down, the vehicle would reflect the light slower that the light reflecting off of the vehicle's surroundings, causing observers to see only a distortion in the air.
It sounds quite unbelievable to me, but it is also unsourced, and I can not even imagine a possible source for something like this. Also if light were stopped, the vehicle would appear black. --CyHawk (talk) 00:19, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Military uses 

message: Quantum Doughnuts Slow And Freeze Light At Will: Fast Computing And 'Slow Glass'   ScienceDaily 2009/03/09 Shenme (talk) 03:38, 10 March 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Fast Computing And 'Slow Glass' 

message: I know of an expirment that managed to completely stop light, for a better descirption of it see here as this is were I origanally wrote about it; were I was recently redireced here. I have a reference of the expirment but at this point  in time, t is not on me; I will find it and come back to you. Can any replies please be on my talk page. 'The Ninjalemming' 18:22, 21 May 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Stopped or stored light 

message: What happens when the speed of light in a medium is precisely equal to the speed of sound in the same medium?  Can the light be transformed to sound in some kind of "sonic boom"?  Can the sound be transformed to light in some kind of sonoluminescence?  Is there an equilibration of energy between the two transmission modes?  I wonder if there's something to use in solid state refrigeration. (hmmm, that last should not be a red link).  See also  - pity I can't access it and don't know Mandelstam-Brillouin scattering or what an optical-acoustic soliton is...  Wnt (talk) 13:30, 4 August 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  When speed of light = speed of sound 

message: I'd like to see the materials, the experimental setup, and the math all in this article -- concretely described, with empirical numbers. How big is it, how much power does it draw, what's it made out of. All that. There'e two experiments mentioned by name and university in the intro, with a speed. Let's see them with details in the body. 89.217.1.254 (talk) 23:24, 24 May 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: More details would be good, but go easy on the math. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia not a textbook. Mathematical treatment of a topic is appropriate only when it aids understanding of the concept; particularly one needs to consider what readers might be interested in a topic, and write the article at an appropriate level for the likely readers.--Srleffler (talk) 17:01, 25 May 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Short on specifics 

message: If Hau and her team of researchers was the first to accomplish making slow light, the article should state this, provided a good source is cited. If she and her team were not the first, or if there were earlier efforts that had partial success, these should be mentioned. In addition, theoretical proposals for slow light prior to experimental realization should be covered.155.97.8.213 (talk) 21:01, 9 February 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: Addressed! See https://doi.org/10.1364/AOP.2.000287 for a good summary of this. 2dot718 (talk) 00:33, 16 December 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Was Hau's team the first? 

message: For me, the most interesting part of this article, by far, should be where it explains how it is possible to slow light. The first paragraph of the section "Different ways to achieve slow light" reads as follows:
"There are many mechanisms which can generate slow light, all of which create narrow spectral regions with high dispersion, i.e. peaks in the dispersion relation. Schemes are generally grouped into two categories: material dispersion and waveguide dispersion. Material dispersion mechanisms such as electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT), coherent population oscillation (CPO), and various four-wave mixing (FWM) schemes produce a rapid change in refractive index as a function of optical frequency, i.e. they modify the temporal component of a propagating wave. This is done by using a nonlinear effect to modify the dipole response of a medium to a signal or "probe" field. Waveguide dispersion mechanisms such as photonic crystals, coupled resonator optical waveguides (CROW), and other micro-resonator structures[6] modify the spatial component (k-vector) of a propagating wave. Slowlight can also be achieved by exploiting the dispersion properties of planar waveguides realized with single negative metamaterials (SNM)[7][8] or double negative metamaterials (DNM).[9]"
Who among us can understand that?  Not I, despite having advanced training in technical fields. There is nothing *wrong* with including this information — as a supplement to this article, as a nice luxury. What is not a luxury is that this article must explain in terms that an ordinary person can understand, the answer to the question:  What is the gist of at least one method used to slow light?  (Once again: Describing multiple methods is fine, but it is much less important than describing *one* of them — preferably the one that the team used originally, or one that is commonly used now.2600:1700:E1C0:F340:F89E:9660:FD17:4502 (talk) 23:48, 26 April 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Suggestion for the heart of the article 

message: I've sourced out the applications section, but much of it seems like early-development stuff from 10-15 years ago. No idea how much of it is currently relevant. Optics isn't my research area, so this could use attention from an expert.
Also, is the IBM chip mentioned in the intro notable enough, or should it be moved to this section? 2dot718 (talk) 02:14, 16 December 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Potential use" section 

message: We need to work on sourcing the "background section." I will be going over this in due time; any help is much appreciated, and encouraged. SpiralSource (talk) 06:33, 12 January 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sourcing