Fast Light, Slow Light and Left Handed Light

P. W. Milonni - Collection Series in Optics and Optoelectronics

247 pages, parution le 07/12/2004

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Résumé

This international series includes books on all aspects of theoretical and applied optics and optoelectronics, including geometrical and wave optics, nonlinear optics, optical materials, lasers, quantum and atom optics, imaging and information processing, optical data storage and communication, fabrication technologies, and optical and optoelectronic device physics. Titles in the series range in level from advanced textbooks for graduate students, to research monographs on specialized topics designed to meet the requirements of scientists and engineers working in the optics and optoelectronics industry.

The propagation of light in dispersive media is a subject of fundamental as well as practical importance. In recent years attention has focused in particular on media in which the refractive index can vary with frequency in such a way that the group velocities of optical pulses can be much greater or much smallerthan the speed of light in vacuum, or in which the refractive index can be negative.This book treats these topics at an introductory to intermediate level, focusing on the basic theory but also describingthe significant experimental progress made duringthe past decade.

Considerable attention is paid to the fact that superluminal group velocities are not in conflict with special relativity, and to the role of quantum effects in preventingsuperluminal communication and violations of Einstein causality. Some of the basic physics at the opposite extreme of very slow grou p velocities, and stopped and regenerated light, is discussed, including the concepts of electromagnetically induced transparency and dark-state polaritons.

Another very active aspect of the subject concerns the possibility of designing 'metamaterials' in which the refractive index can be negative and propagating light is left-handed in the sense that the phase and group velocities are in opposite directions. The last two chapters of the book are an introduction to some of the basic theory and consequences of negative refractive index, with emphasis on the seminal work carried out since 2000. The possibility that 'perfect' lenses can be made from negative-index metamaterials, which has been perhaps the most controversial aspect of the field, is introduced and discussed in some detail.

Sommaire

Preface
In the beginning
Fast light
Quantum theory and light propagation
Fast light and signal velocity
Slow light
Stopped, stored, and regenerated light
Left-handed light : basic theory's Metamaterials for left-handed light
Bibliography
Index

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Caractéristiques techniques

	PAPIER
Éditeur(s)	Institute of Physics (IOP)
Auteur(s)	P. W. Milonni
Collection	Series in Optics and Optoelectronics
Parution	07/12/2004
Nb. de pages	247
Format	16 x 24
Couverture	Relié
Poids	579g
Intérieur	Noir et Blanc
EAN13	9780750309264
ISBN13	978-0-7503-0926-4