Related papers: Which group velocity of light in a dispersive medi…
Recently, a series of theoretical and experimental papers on free-space propagation of pulsed Laguerre-Gaussian and Bessel beams was published, which reached contradictory and controversial results about group velocities of such pulses.…
The propagation of a massless field in attractive and repulsive potentials is considered. It is shown that though the group velocity in such potentials can be larger than one, the wave front propagates with the speed of light. A…
The group velocity for pulses in an optical medium can be negative at frequencies between those of a pair of laser-pumped spectral lines. The gain medium then can amplify the leading edge of a pulse resulting in a time advance of the pulse…
We study the propagation of light pulses in an absorbing medium when the frequency of their carrier coincides with a zero of the refractive index dispersion. Although slow light and, a fortiori, fast light are not expected in such…
Slow light in moving media reaches a paradoxical regime when the flow speed of the medium approaches the group velocity of light. Pulses can penetrate a region where a counter-propagating flow exceeds the group velocity. When the…
We consider pulse propagation in a linear anomalously dispersive medium where the group velocity exceeds the speed of light in vacuum (c) or even becomes negative. A signal velocity is defined operationally based on the optical…
In two models it is shown that a light pulse propagates from a vacuum into certain media with velocity greater than that of a light in a vacuum (c). By numerical calculation the propagating properties of such a light are given.
The mechanisms leading to a seemingly superluminal propagation of light in dispersive media are examined. The anomalous dispersion near an absorption line, involved in the first experiments displaying negative group velocity propagation, is…
We present experimental evidence that light storage, i.e. the controlled release of a light pulse by an atomic sample dependent on the past presence of a writing pulse, is not restricted to small group velocity media but can also occur in a…
We show that an incident wavepacket at the boundary to a medium with extremely slow group velocity, experiences enhanced reflection and a substantial spatial and temporal distortion of the transmitted wave packet. In the limit of vanishing…
The Poynting vector, energy density and energy velocity of light pulses propagating in anomalous dispersion medium (used in WKD-like experiments) are calculated. Results show that a negative energy density in the medium propagates along…
Pulsed Bessel beams of light propagating in free-space experience diffraction effects that resemble those of anomalous dispersion on pulse propagation. It is then shown that a pulsed Bessel beam in a normally dispersive material can remain…
It is typically assumed that the fluctuations associated with a stationary broadband incoherent field propagate in free space at the speed of light in vacuum c. Here we introduce the concept of 'coherence group velocity', which -- in…
We present a model for a vacuum-like effective medium composed of the absorbing and gain media under the special designed parameters. Within the linear response theory, we prove that any pulse signal (with or without a discontinuity)…
Recent experiments have demonstrated that it is possible to alter the dispersion of a medium without significantly altering its absorption or refractive index and that this may be done while a wave propagates through the medium. This…
It is well known that although the group velocity of structured light pulses propagating in vacuum can be subluminal or superluminal, the upper limit of the energy flow velocity is c, the speed of light in vacuum. This inequality can be…
A universal relation has been established between the local energy transport velocity along the direction of propagation and the group velocity of scalar and vector-valued propagation-invariant spatiotemporally localized superluminal and…
When a negative slope of the dispersion curve is encountered, the propagating light may be either 'fast light' or 'backward propagating'. We show that causality considerations select only one of which for each scenario, and demonstrate that…
The propagation of light-pulse with negative group-velocity in a nonlinear medium is studied theoretically. We show that the necessary conditions for these effects to be observable are realized in a three-level $\Lambda$-system interacting…
We analytically study the linear propagation of arbitrarily shaped light-pulses through an absorbing medium with a narrow transparency-window or through a resonant amplifying medium. We point out that, under certain general conditions, the…