Another faster than light claim: US NIST scientists generate superluminal light pulses

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Another faster than light claim: US NIST scientists generate superluminal light pulses

Posted By: MrFusion [Send E-Mail]
Date: Monday, 7-May-2012 10:19:58

The claim of faster-than-light neutrinos appears to have bitten the dust, but here is a new claim of faster than light...light: ************************* US gov boffins achieve speeds FASTER THAN LIGHT 'Loophole' found in Special Theory of Relativity By Lewis Page • 7th May 2012 13:04 GMT Scientists working in a US government laboratory say they have managed to transmit a signal from point to point faster than the speed of light in a vacuum - in a development apparently violating the laws of physics. According to a statement issued by the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST): According to Einstein's special theory of relativity, light traveling in a vacuum is the universal speed limit. No information can travel faster than light.But there's kind of a loophole ... Sadly this isn't the sort of loophole which seems likely to lead to hyperdrive starships or interstellar portal technology or anything like that. But it does, in effect, let information go faster than light. In a way.This is achieved by taking an ordinary pulse of light and changing its shape so that the peak of the pulse moves quickly from the back towards the front. As the entire pulse is already travelling at very close to speed-of-light-inna-vacuum, the peak is now travelling faster than light. ***** CONTINUE AT: ***** http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/05/07/faster_than_light_quantum/ Also, here is the abstract of the actual scientific paper: http://prl.aps.org/abstract/PRL/v108/i17/e173902 ************************* Phys. Rev. Lett. 108, 173902 (2012) [5 pages] Stimulated Generation of Superluminal Light Pulses via Four-Wave Mixing Ryan T. Glasser, Ulrich Vogl, and Paul D. Lett National Institute of Standards and Technology and Joint Quantum Institute, NIST and University of Maryland, Gaithersburg, Maryland 20899, USA Received 13 December 2011; published 26 April 2012 We report on the four-wave mixing of superluminal pulses, in which both the injected and generated pulses involved in the process propagate with negative group velocities. Generated pulses with negative group velocities of up to vg=-1/880c are demonstrated, corresponding to the generated pulse’s peak exiting the 1.7 cm long medium ≈50  ns earlier than if it had propagated at the speed of light in vacuum, c. We also show that in some cases the seeded pulse may propagate with a group velocity larger than c, and that the generated conjugate pulse peak may exit the medium even earlier than the amplified seed pulse peak. We can control the group velocities of the two pulses by changing the seed detuning and the input seed power. *************************** And, of course, I have to re-post the limerick I posted before: The was a young lady named Bright Who could travel faster than light. She left one day in a relative way And arrived on the previous night.