Gravitational red-shift and deflection of slow light

Dressel, J.; Rajeev, S. G.; Howell, J. C.; Jordan, A. N.

Gravitational red-shift and deflection of slow light

Authors

Description

We explore the nature of the classical propagation of light through media with strong frequency-dependent dispersion in the presence of a gravitational field. In the weak field limit, gravity causes a redshift of the optical frequency, which the slow-light medium converts into a spatially-varying index of refraction. This results in the bending of a light ray in the medium. We further propose experimental techniques to amplify and detect the phenomenon using weak value measurements. Independent heuristic and rigorous derivations of this effect are given.
9 pages, 1 figure