Bose-Einstein Condensate and affecting lights speed ?

Question

I heard that light can be slowed down in a bose-einstein condensate. This could be a possible information storage center by using light instead of electricity. I know that within a bose-einstein condensate that the electrons wavelength within the material or gas becomes so large that the electrons wavelengths overlap. When this occurs, I believe, the acts like a liquid.

Anyway, why/how does light slow down when it enters a bose-einstein condensate. Does the lights wavelength somehow interact with the electrons wavelength and cause some type of interference between them and slow down the light.

I am not a materials scientist, a physicist, or a low-temperature scientist. I am a Molecular Biologist. I just have an interest with light and its activities.

Thank you.

Answer 1

BEC is cooled down to such low temperatures that it actually starts to blur (because of the uncertainty principle) and the atoms get extremely close to eachother. so the light ray doesnt really stop, it just gets essentially trapped in the BEC because it gets emitted and reabsorbed over and over.

Answer 2

I would guess that light slows when passing through a bose-einstein condensate because it interacts with the particles making up the condensate.

What really happens in a Bose-Einstein condensate is that the states of the particles making up the condensate become the same so that in essence you have one giant quantum.

Anyway, I would probably say (without doing any research on it) that a  photon passing through the condensate gets absorbed and re-emitted by the particles in the condensate. That is how light interacts with atoms. If a photon is a frequency that corresponds to different energy levels in an atom, the atom will absorb the photon (specifically the photon will be absorbed by an electron in a lower energy level). It bumps the electron to a higher energy level, which is unstable. After a time delay the electron will emit a photon of the same frequency and drop down to its original energy level. That type of interaction is probably what slows the light down.

David

http://quantummechanicsdemystified.blogs...