English

Gravitational red-shift and deflection of slow light

Optics 2009-05-18 v1 General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology Classical Physics Quantum Physics

Abstract

We explore the nature of the classical propagation of light through media with strong frequency-dependent dispersion in the presence of a gravitational field. In the weak field limit, gravity causes a redshift of the optical frequency, which the slow-light medium converts into a spatially-varying index of refraction. This results in the bending of a light ray in the medium. We further propose experimental techniques to amplify and detect the phenomenon using weak value measurements. Independent heuristic and rigorous derivations of this effect are given.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0810.4849,
  title  = {Gravitational red-shift and deflection of slow light},
  author = {J. Dressel and S. G. Rajeev and J. C. Howell and A. N. Jordan},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0810.4849},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

9 pages, 1 figure

R2 v1 2026-06-21T11:35:20.624Z