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<\/a><\/p>\nWhile this law isn\u2019t likely to ever be broken, there are features of light which don\u2019t play by the same rules. Manipulating them won\u2019t hasten our ability to travel to the stars, but they could help us clear the way to a whole new class of laser technology.<\/p>\n
Physicists have been playing hard and fast with the speed limit of light pulses for a while, speeding them up and even slowing them to a virtual stand-still using various materials like cold atomic gases, refractive crystals, and optical fibers.<\/p>\n
This time, researchers from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California and the University of Rochester in New York have managed it inside hot swarms of charged particles, fine-tuning the speed of light waves within plasma to anywhere from around one-tenth of light\u2019s usual vacuum speed to more than 30 percent faster. This is both more \u2013 and less \u2013 impressive than it sounds. To break the hearts of those hoping it\u2019ll fly us to Proxima Centauri and back in time for tea, this superluminal travel is well within the laws of physics. Sorry.<\/p>\n
A photon\u2019s speed is locked in place by the weave of electrical and magnetic fields referred to as electromagnetism. There\u2019s no getting around that, but pulses of photons within narrow frequencies also jostle in ways that create regular waves. The rhythmic rise and fall of whole groups of light waves moves through stuff at a rate described as group velocity, and it\u2019s this \u2018wave of waves<\/em>\u2019 that can be tweaked to slow down or speed up, depending on the electromagnetic conditions of its surrounds.<\/p>\n By stripping electrons away from a stream of hydrogen and helium ions with a laser, the researchers were able to modify the group velocity of light pulses sent through them by a second light source, putting the brakes on or streamlining them by adjusting the gas\u2019s ratio and forcing the pulse\u2019s features to modify shape. The overall effect was due to refraction from the plasma\u2019s fields and the polarized light from the primary laser used to strip them down. The individual light waves still zoomed along at their usual pace, even as their collective dance appeared to accelerate.<\/p>\n From a theoretical standing, the experiment helps flesh out the physics of plasmas and put new constraints on the accuracy of current models. Practically speaking, this is good news for advanced technologies waiting in the wings for clues on how to get around obstacles preventing them from being turned into reality.<\/p>\n Lasers would be the big winners here, especially the insanely powerful variety. Old-school lasers rely on solid-state optical materials, which tend to get damaged as the energy cranks up. Using streams of plasma to amplify or modify light characteristics would get around this issue, but to make the most of it we really need to model their electromagnetic characteristics.<\/p>\n It\u2019s no coincidence that Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is keen to understand the optical nature of plasmas, being home to some of the world\u2019s most impressive laser technology.<\/p>\n Ever more powerful lasers are just what we need for a whole bunch of applications, from ramping up particle accelerators to improving clean fusion technology. It might not help us move through space any faster, but it\u2019s these very discoveries that will hasten us towards the kind of future we all dream of.<\/p>\n This research was published in Physical Review Letters<\/em>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n yogaesoteric \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Sailing through the smooth waters of vacuum, a photon of light moves at around 300,000 kilometers (186,000 miles) a second. This sets a firm limit on how quickly a whisper of information can travel anywhere in the Universe. While this law isn\u2019t likely to ever be broken, there are features of light which don\u2019t play […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1369],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-55644","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science-technology-1602-en"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55644","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55644"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55644\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55651,"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55644\/revisions\/55651"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55644"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55644"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55644"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nOctober 7, 2021<\/strong><\/p>\n