Related papers: Has superluminal light propagation been observed?
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 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…
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…
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 experimentally study the group time delay for a light pulse propagating through hot Rb vapor in the presence of a strong coupling field in a $\Lambda$ configuration. We demonstrate that the ultra-slow pulse propagation is transformed…
Mugnai et al. have reported an experiment in which microwave packets appear to travel in air with a speed substantially greater than c. They calculate the group velocity of their packets and find that it agrees with their experimental…
Researchers claim to have observed superluminal (faster than light) propagation of a laser pulse in a gain medium by a new mechanism in which there is no distortion of the pulse [Nature, 406, 277 (2000)]. Our analysis shows that the…
Wang, Kuzmich and Dogariu, in their 20 July, 2000, Nature article, describe an experiment ostensibly measuring superluminal speeds of 310c via a few percent shift in time of an optical pulse undergoing anomalous dispersion in a pumped…
We report on the four-wave mixing of superluminal pulses, in which both the injected and generated pulses involved in the process propagate with negative group velocities. Generated pulses with negative group velocities of up to…
We suggest a possible interpretation of the recent observation by the OPERA collaboration of superluminal propagation of neutrinos. We show that it is in principle possible that the group velocity of neutrinos exceeds the speed of light…
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…
Anomalous dispersion cannot occur in a transparent passive medium where electromagnetic radiation is being absorbed at all frequencies, as pointed out by Landau and Lifshitz. Here we show, both theoretically and experimentally, that…
Recent manifestations of apparently faster-than-light effects confirmed our predictions that the group velocity in transparent optical media can exceed c. Special relativity is not violated by these phenomena. Moreover, in the electronic…
We present a simple electronic circuit which provides negative group delays for band-limited, base-band pulses. It is shown that large time advancement comparable to the pulse width can be achieved with appropriate cascading of…
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.…
An explanation for superluminal phenomena based on wave-particle duality of photons is suggested. A single photon may be regarded as a wave packet, whose spatial extension is its coherence volume. As a photon propagates as a wave train in…
We present a simple electronic circuit which produces negative group delays for base-band pulses. When a band-limited pulse is applied as the input, a forwarded pulse appears at the output. The negative group delays in lumped systems share…
Much experimental evidence of superluminal phenomena has been available by electromagnetic wave propagation experiments, with the results showing that the phase time do describe the barrier traversal time. Based on the extrapolated phase…
We report the experimental demonstration of the superluminal propagation of multi-spatial-mode images via four-wave mixing in hot atomic vapor, in which all spatial sub-regions propagate with negative group velocities. We investigate the…
Gouy's phase of transversally limited pulses can create a strong anomalous dispersion in vacuum leading to highly superluminal and negative group velocities. As a consequence, a focusing pulse can diverge beyond the focus before converging…