Taming light with cold atoms

Much of the extraordinary progress of developments in communication (e-mail, and/or internet) has been achieved due to improvements in optical communication. This paper describes a new approach which could improve the speed of communication. The ability to stop light in its tracks by passing it through a cloud of ultracold atoms could lead to new techniques for optical storage. The described slow-light experiments have triggered new physics both on the experimental and theoretical fronts. The cold atom system allows the steepest possible refractive index profiles, and therefore the most dramatic effects, as Doppler effects are eliminated. Furthermore, cold atoms provide maximum flexibility in the choice of beam geometry. This is important for the storage and retrieval of multiple pulses of optical information in an atomic medium, as it would allow individual pulses to be selectively addressed. Slow and stopped light have many potential applications in optical communication and processing, including optical information storage, ultra-sensitive optical switches, and optical delay lines. It could also be used in quantum-information processing, in which quantum-mechanical information is used for computing and communication purposes. On a very different front, slow light provides us with a totally new way of probing the unusual properties of Bose-Einstein condensates