NTT's Photonic Crystals Delay Light

Researchers at NTT have developed a "photonic crystal" capable of trapping light for over one nanosecond within a wavelength-sized micro-cavity. The technique makes it possible to reduce the speed of light down to one 50 thousandth of that in air. The development was announced in the December 22 edition of "Nature Photonics" magazine.

NTT said the advancement opens up various possibilities for photonics such as a large-scale photonic information processing chip with extremely low power consumption power, or perhaps an optical quantum information processor operating with single photons.

http://www.ntt.co.jp/news/news06e/0612/061221a.html