A minute optical device in a silicon chip has attained the slowest light propagation on a chip up until now. Developed by a team of researchers at UC Santa Cruz and Brigham Young University, the chip is capable of reducing the speed of light by a factor of 1,200.<\/p>\n
The study was published in Nature Photonics<\/em> September 5 online edition and the November print issue.<\/p>\n The facility to control light pulses on an integrated chip-based platform is a key step toward the realization of all-optical quantum communication<\/a> networks. They hold the potential for huge improvements in ultra-low-power performance.<\/p>\n “While today\u2019s optical fibers<\/a> regularly transmit data at light speed, routing and data processing operations still necessitate converting light signals to electronic signals. All-optical data processing will require compact, reliable devices that can slow, store, and process light pulses. The simplest example of how slow light can be used is to provide a data buffer or tunable signal delay in an optical network, but we are looking beyond that with our integrated photonic chip,”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Schmidt said.<\/p>\n The device uses quantum interference effects in a rubidium vapor inside a hollow-core optical waveguide. The waveguide is built into a silicon chip using standard manufacturing techniques and is a progression of earlier work<\/a> by Schmidt and his collaborators that enabled them to perform atomic spectroscopy on a chip.<\/p>\n Several different methods have been used to slow light to a crawl and even bring it to a complete halt for a few hundredths of a millisecond. Formerly though, systems based on quantum interference needed low temperatures or laboratory setups too complex for practical use.<\/p>\nRubidium Vapor In Waveguide<\/h2>\n