The effect of a Bose-Einstein Condensate on light

[RasRemi]

The title sort of tells it. My question is, how is it that a Bose-Einstein condensate compresses and slows down the passage of light through it while keeping the light's quantum "information" such that the bean of light will exit the condensate and return to its normal coherency? I know that the actual speed of light is not affected by its passage through such a condensate but that light is simply forced to take a longer and more circuitous route to travel through it, but still how does that work given that a Bose-Einstein condensate is composed of overlapping wave-like atoms?

 

[BigJDubs]

The way a Bose-Einstein condensate compresses and slows down the passage of light is through a process called Bragg diffraction. This process involves the overlap of multiple waves, which causes them to interfere with each other. The interference between the waves causes them to scatter in all directions, creating a diffraction pattern. This diffraction pattern effectively slows down the passage of light, as it takes more time for the light to pass through the condensate. At the same time, the quantum information contained in the photons remains intact, as they still contain the same frequency, polarization, and amplitude as before. This is due to the fact that the photons are not absorbed by the condensate, but instead only scattered by the overlapping waves. Therefore, when the photons emerge from the condensate, they still possess the same quantum information they did before entering it.