Researchers are developing a way to control the speed of light and send it back

Researchers at the University of Central Florida have developed a way to control the speed of light. They can not only speed up and slow down the light, but also make it backward.

The results were published recently in the journal Nature Communications.

This achievement is a major step in research that could one day lead to more effective optical communication, as this technique could be used to reduce data congestion and prevent information loss. And as more and more devices connect and data transfer rates increase, this type of control will be needed.

Previous attempts to control the speed of light included passing light through various materials to adjust the speed. The new technique, however, allows the speed to be adjusted for the first time in the open, without using intermediate material to accelerate or slow it down.

"This is the first clear demonstration of controlling the speed of a pulsed light in a free space," said co-author of the study, Ayman Abouraddy, a professor at the college. optics and photonics of the UCF. "And that opens doors for many applications, the optical buffer being just one example among others, but the most important is that it is simple, reproducible and reliable.

Abouraddy and co-author of the study, Esat Kondakci, demonstrated that they could accelerate a pulse of light up to 30 times that of light, slow it down to half the speed of light and also push back the pulse.

Researchers have been able to develop this technique by using a special device, called a spatial light modulator, to mix the spatial and temporal properties of light, allowing them to control the speed of the light pulse. The mixture of the two properties was the key to the success of the technique.

"We are able to control the speed of the pulse by entering the pulse itself and reorganizing its energy so that its degrees of freedom in space and time mix," said Abouraddy.

"We are very pleased with these results and hope that this is only the starting point for future research," he said.

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