Captured rainbows hold promise for laboratory products

The next generation of laboratory products could communicate over optical networks using rainbows.

While research in recent years has found ways to slow down beams of light, either by reducing their speed or by trapping them in an enclosed space, researchers in China have now broadened the range of wavelengths that can be captured.

The team from Nanjing University report their findings in Applied Physics Letters, where they explain that the trapped light cannot move away, but its energy is not absorbed by the medium through which it is passing.

Effectively, this allows them to trap rainbows using a layered and self-similar structure built of two different materials in alternating shells.

Such a structure is similar to that used in conventional fibre optics, where layers with different refractive indices steer light towards the centre of the fibre, shortening its path and reducing attenuation.

Applications for the new technology could include communication between network-enabled laboratory products, with potential to develop it further for use in quantum computing.