NASA-funded research at Harvard University, that literally stops light in its tracks, may someday lead to breakneck-speed computers that shelter enormous amounts of data from intruders. The research is conducted by a team led by Dr. Lene Hau, a Harvard physics professor.

In their laboratory, Hau and her colleagues have been able to slow a pulse of light, and even stop it, for several-thousandths of a second. They've also created a roadblock for light, where they can shorten a light pulse by factors of a billion.

"This could open up a whole new way to use light, doing things we could only imagine before," Hau said. "Until now, many technologies have been limited by the speed at which light travels." These breakthroughs may eventually be used in advanced optical-communication applications. "Light can carry enormous amounts of information through changes in its frequency, phase, intensity or other properties," Hau said. When the light pulse stops its information is suspended and stored, just as information is stored in the memory of a computer. Light-carrying quantum bits could carry significantly more information than current computer bits. Quantum computers could also be more secure by encrypting information in elaborate codes that could be broken only by using a laser and complex decoding formulas.

Hau's team is also using slow light as a completely new probe of the very odd properties of Bose-Einstein condensates. For example, with the light roadblock the team created, they can study waves and dramatic rotating-vortex patterns in the condensates. >from *Frozen Light: Cool NASA Research Holds Promise*. May 21, 2003

related context
> speed of light broken with basic lab kit. september 16, 2002
> the magic of light: light art exhibition . february 8, 2002
> 7-qubit quantum computer: first demonstration of shor's factoring algorithm. january 3, 2002
> toward atomtronics: discovers of new state of matter nobel prize. october 11, 2001

imago
> frozen assets composition