Frozen Light

Slowing a beam of light to a halt may pave the way for new optical communications technology, tabletop black holes and quantum computers

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Lene Vestergaard Hau is Gordon McKay Professor of Applied Physics and professor of physics at Harvard University and heads the Atom Cooling Group at the Rowland Institute for Science in Cambridge, Mass., where the experiments detailed in this article were performed. She received her Ph.D. in theoretical solid state physics from the University of Århus in Denmark. The author wishes to thank the wonderful Rowland Institute team of Zachary Dutton, Chien Liu, Cyrus H. Behroozi, Brian Busch, Christopher Slowe and Michael Budde, as well as Stephen E. Harris of Stanford University, for an extremely fruitful collaboration.

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Scientific American Magazine Vol 285 Issue 1This article was published with the title “Frozen Light” in Scientific American Magazine Vol. 285 No. 1 (), p. 66
doi:10.1038/scientificamerican0701-66

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