Published January 8, 2016
| Published
Journal Article
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Light-Drag Enhancement by a Highly Dispersive Rubidium Vapor
Abstract
The change in the speed of light as it propagates through a moving material has been a subject of study for almost two centuries. This phenomenon, known as the Fresnel light-drag effect, is quite small and usually requires a large interaction path length and/or a large velocity of the moving medium to be observed. Here, we show experimentally that the observed drag effect can be enhanced by over 2 orders of magnitude when the light beam propagates through a moving slow-light medium. Our results are in good agreement with the theoretical prediction, which indicates that, in the limit of large group indices, the strength of the light-drag effect is proportional to the group index of the moving medium.
Additional Information
© 2016 American Physical Society. (Received 14 October 2015; published 6 January 2016) The authors would like to thank Peter Milonni for useful discussions. A. S., I. D. L., and R. W. B. acknowledge the support of the Canada Excellence Research Chairs program, and M. M., O. S. M. L., and R. W. B. acknowledge the support of the U.S. Defense Threat Reduction Agency.Attached Files
Published - PhysRevLett.116.013601
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Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 96845
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20190628-110705352
- Canada Research Chairs
- Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA)
- Created
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2019-06-28Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2021-11-16Created from EPrint's last_modified field