Scientists trap light in nano-soup
Posted by a blog reader on Fri 21 Dec 2007Categories: Reader's posts | 1 Comment
In this news article on Chemistry World, the authors claim that “This is the first visual evidence of storage and retrieval of light for a long and controllable duration – in all other reports, storage time of photons is restricted to a few nanoseconds” I hope this claim won’t be repeated in the final published article, because it is totally inaccurate. See for example with controlled storage times of seconds.
It is also a bit strange that the only reference to this work is “Current Science 2007, 98, 1071″, the online version of which was last updated in early 2007 to volume 92. Where can I read more???
I would have thought Chemistry World could do better than this.
Fri 28 Dec 2007 at 10:29 am
This is the first visual evidence of “efficient” storage and retrieval of light for a long and controllable duration. In all other reports, storage time of photons is restricted to few nanoseconds. The statement remains valid even if one replaces “few nanoseconds” with “Slightly more than one second”. Even current science paper (93(8), 1071 (2007)) reports 10 seconds, which is an order of magnitude higher. Further in PRL letter (95, 063601 (2005), sample was kept at liquid helium temperature and not at the room temperature. Moreover, efficiency of the sample (Praseodymium doped Y2SiO5) was “poor”. Hence practical utility may not be possible. The work reported by Xu et al. in Nature Physics (3, 406 (2007)) reports storage time of few picoseconds. This technique also operates at room temperature and is efficient. In this sense statement made in Chemistry World is correct. How there can be other publication exist when this itself is the first published work!! Chemistry world deserves all the credits for publishing this unique work carried out by Indian Scientists.