Duke Physics

Information Velocity News and Links

Press About Our Work

• The New Scientist highlighted our slow light research in the June 5, 2004 issue in an article entitled `Speedier light could pump up chip power,' by Stephen Battersby.   The article is not available online unless you have a paid subscription; we'll send you a copy if you send us an email.  The article is based on the talk given by D. Gauthier (`Observation of fast information velocity in a slow-light medium,' 2004 Annual Meeting of DAMOP, May 29, 2004). 
• The Institute of Physics PhysicsWeb highlighted our fast light work in a December 2003 online article entitled `Clear message for causality,' by Aephraim Steinberg.
  
• Discover Magazine highlights our fast-light results in a November 6, 2003 online article, entitled `Score another win for Albert Einstein,' by Laura Wright, November 6, 2003.
  
• The New Scientist featured our fast light research in the October 18, 2003 issue in an article entitled `Speed Freaks,' by Valerie Jamison.   The article is not available online unless you have a paid subscription; we'll send you a copy if you send us an email.
  
• Nature highlighted our recent Nature Article in a piece entitled `Relativity: The ultimate speed limit.'
• The October 16, 2003 Nature Science Update has an excellent descriptive article about our fast light work, entitled `Detection rescues cause and effect: Information does not really travel faster than light,' by Philip Ball.
• An October 15, 2003 online article in Science Now , entitled `Messages fly no faster than light,' by Charles Seife, presents a very clear and compact description of our recent fast-light information velocity result.
• Our fast-light work is described in a Sunday Science Supplement of Ars Technica, entitled `A blow to time travel,' by Fred Locklear.  Ars Technica is a community web-site devoted to science and technology.
• The Duke press release about our fast-light research was posted on SpaceRef.com (`Duke experiments validate relativity theory's light speed limit') and Universe Today (`Einstein still seems to be right.').
• The University of Arizona press release about our fast-light research was posted on Spaceflight Now (`Einstein was right, experimenters find.')
• A nice summary of the May 22 Economist article (see below) can be found Roland Piquepaille's Technology Trends in a piece entitled `Light can travel faster than light.'
  
• The May 22, 2003 issue of The Economist describes our fast-light information velocity research in an article entitled `There was a young fellow called Bright ... : Light can travel faster than light.  Sort of.'  The article is based on the talk given by D. Gauthier (`Information velocity in `fast light' optical pulse propagation,' 2003 Annual Meeting of DAMOP, Boulder, CO, May 21-24, 2003).  

Other Related Press

• sciencenews.org discussing work from the groups of Wang, Nimtz, and Chiao.
• physicsweb.org discussing the work of Wang's group.
• An article by Lijun Wang about his work.

Information and Tutorials on Fast Light

• A nice tutorial and description of superluminal phenomena from Wolfram, the makers of Mathematica
• A discussion faster-than-light communication and travel (hosted by John Baez of the University of California, Riverside)
• A nice little interactive applet demonstrating the group velocity (from a class web page at the University of Virginia)
• An excellent Mathematica-based tutorial on fast (or superluminal) light (from the Budker group at Berkeley)
• An excellent java applet that very simply demonstrates the group effect by showing how a pulse is made up of a different frequency components.
• Another interesting java applet showing the group effect with fast and slow light.
  

Other Researchers

• Raymond Chiao
• Lijun Wang
• Günter Nimtz
• Aephraim Steinberg
• G. Diener
• Bruno Macke
• Dan Gauthier
• Mark Neifeld
• Michael Stenner