OSA Board Member Robert Boyd Makes Discover Magazine’s Top 100 List

WASHINGTON, Jan. 19 – Optical Society of America Board Member and University of Rochester Professor Robert Boyd and his team of researchers have been recognized in Discover magazine’s list of Top 100 Science Stories of 2006.  Boyd’s team found a new way to manipulate light so it travels backwards – resulting in light traveling faster than the speed of light itself.

According to a University of Rochester announcement, Boyd previously showed how he can slow down a pulse of light to slower than an airplane, or speed it up faster than its breakneck pace, using exotic techniques and materials. But in the spring of 2006 he took what was once just a mathematical oddity – negative speed – and showed it working in the real world.

Boyd sent a pulse through an optical fiber, and before its peak even entered the fiber, it was exiting the other end. Through experiments he was able to see that the pulse inside the fiber was actually moving backward, linking the input and output pulses.

“I’ve had some of the world’s experts scratching their heads over this one,” says Boyd. “Theory predicted that we could send light backwards, but nobody knew if the theory would hold up or even if it could be observed in laboratory conditions. It’s weird stuff.”

The Discover magazine article featuring Boyd’s research can be viewed here: http://www.discover.com/issues/jan-07/features/physics/?page=2#87.  The research also made Discover magazine’s list of Top 6 Physics Stories of 2006.