Scientists trap light inside a magnet

https://www.ccny.cuny.edu/news/ccny-scientists-trap-light-inside-magnet

by geox • 3 years ago

69 8 3 years ago

ccny.cuny.edu

combat-banana• 3 years ago

I wonder if this will lead to co-applications with https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ion_trap (s)

tooltower• 3 years ago

"Light trapped inside a magnetic crystal can strongly enhance its magneto-optical interactions."

It's an interesting article, but bad title. The novelty isn't in trapping light, but in how this material's optical properties change in response to a magnetic field.

breckenedge• 3 years ago

Source article: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06275-2

dustingetz• 3 years ago

EM waves are bent by magnetic fields? i thought linearity/superposition meant they’d sum with the field and pass right through

gus_massa• 3 years ago

IIUC, they are using a semiconductor and the photons are transformed by the crystal into electron-hole pairs. It's a very non linear material.

Enginerrrd• 3 years ago

Classically and in vacuum I think your intuition is right. However in this case, I think this is happening in bulk materials not in vacuum, and there are other interactions on the atomic scale so light propagating through the lattice has weird affects.

mike50• 3 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonlinear_optics

dikaio• 3 years ago

I’ve always wondered, if/when AI eventually passes us in all that there is, all will be left is the soul, likely the one an only thing we can posses that they cannot.

Trapping light, energy at different vibration levels gives pause. Jokingly of course, but makes you wonder…

Scientists trap light inside a magnet

Related Stories