Scientists at NIST’s Physical Measurement Laboratory have developed a new method to create superluminal light pulses using four-wave mixing in a rubidium vapor cell. The technique generates two separate pulses that travel faster than the speed of light in a vacuum, with one pulse achieving speeds up to 50 ns faster over a 1.7-cm cell than in a vacuum.
The new method could have significant implications for optical communications systems, where signal quality may be improved by speeding up or slowing down pulses. The researchers are investigating the quantum-mechanical correlations between the seed and conjugate pulses, which could provide fundamental insights into quantum coherence and future quantum information processing.
The team’s findings could potentially be used in quantum discord measurements, which define the quantum information shared between two correlated systems. By performing measurements of quantum discord between fast beams and reference beams, the researchers hope to determine how useful this fast light could be for the transmission and processing of quantum information.
Source: https://www.nist.gov/news-events/news/2012/04/first-fast-and-faster
Keywords: Coherence, Quantum Information, Fast Light, Quantum Discord, Superluminal
