This was reported by Science Alert, Ukrinform reported.

Scientists have already established that light can be slowed down under certain conditions. However, the new method is based on electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT), which uses laser manipulation of electrons within a gas stored in vacuum, transforming it from opaque to transparent. This can slow down the laser light.

Light traveling through space moves at a single speed; 299,792 km per second. But if many electromagnetic fields appear in its path, similar to those that surround ordinary matter, this extraordinary speed begins to slow down.

Most transparent materials slow light by a very small amount. But real braking requires special materials such as photonic crystals or even supercooled quantum gases.

Researchers took some of EIT’s principles for controlling light and developed a new material to slow down light. The material is a type of metasurface – a synthetic 2D structure with properties that have no analogues in nature. These metasurfaces are made of very thin layers of silicon, like modern computer chips, and can store and release energy.

According to the results obtained by scientists, light in this system can be slowed down more than 10,000 times. At the same time, light losses are reduced more than five times compared to other similar methods.

The end result of this research is better control over how light moves, which plays a key role in everything from broadband internet to quantum computing.

As Ukrinform reports, researchers at Goethe University in Germany measured the time it takes for a particle of light to pass a hydrogen molecule: this time is 247 zeptoseconds.

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