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Physicists harness atomic 'dark states' to store light
LiveScience ^ | Ben Turner

Posted on 06/11/2021 10:51:59 AM PDT by BenLurkin

Physicists have achieved a phenomenon known as subradiance, in which atoms linger in an excited state, in a dense cloud of atoms...

Atoms gain energy by absorbing photons (light particles) that cause their electrons to jump from the lowest-energy "ground" state to higher-energy excited states. Once they're in an excited state, atoms spontaneously emit a photon and fall back to the ground state. But this isn't always the case. If many atoms are packed together and separated by a shorter distance than the wavelength of the emitted photon, the light they emit will cancel itself out, and the atoms will stay in their excited state.

This process, called subradiance, effectively staves off the decay of a large group, or "ensemble," of excited atoms. Subradiance has been observed before in dilute atomic ensembles and ordered atomic arrays, but never before in dense atomic clouds.

Subradiance works because of a phenomenon called destructive interference. When two waves of light with the same amplitude are made to occupy the same part of space, the peaks and the troughs of the waves can align to add together constructively, making a combined wave that is twice as bright, or destructively, cancelling out both waves entirely.

On the tiny scale of the weird quantum world, particles both have wave-like properties and can simultaneously travel all the infinite paths between one point and another. The path the particle "chooses" to take, and the one we observe, depends on how the wave-like particles interfere with themselves. It's not really the destructive interference between any emitted photons that traps atoms in excited states, but instead — and here's the wacky part — the possibility that it might happen, which stops the photons from being emitted in the first place.

(Excerpt) Read more at livescience.com ...


TOPICS: Science
KEYWORDS: subradiance

1 posted on 06/11/2021 10:51:59 AM PDT by BenLurkin
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To: BenLurkin

Hacking Romulan technololgy...


2 posted on 06/11/2021 10:59:55 AM PDT by bigbob
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To: BenLurkin

ping


3 posted on 06/11/2021 11:03:44 AM PDT by zeestephen
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To: BenLurkin

Power plant workers can now take home electricity sneaked away in their lunch bucket.


4 posted on 06/11/2021 11:05:44 AM PDT by BipolarBob (Try Soylent Green Ice Cream pops in the newest flavor. Grandma-on a-stick.)
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To: BenLurkin

LOL..One of these days the “Science Fair” crowd will turn off the lights for good...


5 posted on 06/11/2021 11:07:59 AM PDT by PerConPat (A politician is an animal which can sit on a fence and yet keep both ears to the ground - Mencken)
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To: BenLurkin

Extremely yawnable...


6 posted on 06/11/2021 11:08:39 AM PDT by SuperLuminal (Where is another Sam Adams now that we desperately need him?)
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To: BenLurkin; Fred Nerks

the possibility that it might happen, which stops the photons from being emitted in the first place.>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Phenomena on the border line between causality and synchronicity.

Interesting.


7 posted on 06/11/2021 11:23:55 AM PDT by Candor7 ((Obama Fascism:http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/05/barack_obama_the_quintessentia_1.html) )
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To: bigbob

The more we study, the more we learn what we don’t know.


8 posted on 06/11/2021 11:27:12 AM PDT by Ed Condon (subliminal messages here in invisible ink)
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To: BenLurkin

Everytime I read these kinds of physics-based papers it reinforces my faith in God the Creator.
Unfortunately, after seeing proof time and time again Science continues to disbelieve in God even after knowing that the universe is Intelligently designed.


9 posted on 06/11/2021 11:29:29 AM PDT by Pez149 (Time to stop saying a theory is fact....)
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To: Candor7

That is an interesting way of putting it.


10 posted on 06/11/2021 11:32:42 AM PDT by steve86 (Prophecies of Maelmhaedhoc O'Morgair (Latin form: Malachy))
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To: steve86

Thats where her power comes from. She is an en-trapper. She sure set off Lindsey Graham in the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings.

I;d say she is just about the most hateful politcian in Washington except for Nancy Pelosi.


11 posted on 06/11/2021 11:40:59 AM PDT by Candor7 ((Obama Fascism:http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/05/barack_obama_the_quintessentia_1.html) )
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To: Candor7

WHAT????


12 posted on 06/11/2021 11:41:48 AM PDT by steve86 (Prophecies of Maelmhaedhoc O'Morgair (Latin form: Malachy))
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To: BenLurkin

“Once they’re in an excited state, atoms spontaneously emit a photon and fall back to the ground state.”

Most guys are like that.


13 posted on 06/11/2021 12:21:41 PM PDT by jdsteel ("A Republic, Madam, if you can keep it." Sorry Ben, looks like we blew it.)
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