Re:Photons that travel in free space slower than the speed o...
by ScottBurson on Monday January 19, 2015 @12:04AM
(#8910429)
The last two sentences of the abstract are:
Our work highlights that, even in free space, the invariance of the speed of light only applies to plane waves. Introducing spatial structure to an optical beam, even for a single photon, reduces the group velocity of the light by a readily measurable amount.
So it appears there is no actual waveguide involved. I guess that means somehow they construct photons in a "waveguide-like configuration" but in free space?
Re:Photons that travel in free space slower than the speed o...
by cynicalkane on Monday January 19, 2015 @02:13AM
(#8910727)
There isn't a physical waveguide. It's a Bessel beam.
The title should be corrected to something truthful, like "Photons in waveguide-like configuration travel slower than light due to self-interference, as predicted".
Anything else is deliberately, willfully, misleading click-bait (I am a physicist and clicked on the comments specifically to avoid clicking on a click-bait headline I knew was almost certainly a lie.)