Trap light?

[SergiusPaulus]

If you created a fiber optic cable or other container in the shape of a 9 or a 6 where light is introduced at the stem towards the oval would the element of light be Trapped in that oval for any length of time? Trap light. Save energy.

 

[Num7]

Found this, it's pretty interesting, never thought of it before.

Would it be possible to store light in a circular fiber optic cable?

Answer (1 of 2): The problem with trying to store light is that light is very very fast. It slows down a bit in a fiber, but it still goes about 200,000 km/s. Although fibers are astoundingly low-loss, once you inject light into your storage device, it will decay away in the blink of an eye. Sto...

www.quora.com

Here's a very short snippet and a video. The whole explanation is detailed very well in the link.

The problem with trying to store light is that light is very very fast. It slows down a bit in a fiber, but it still goes about 200,000 km/s. Although fibers are astoundingly low-loss, once you inject light into your storage device, it will decay away in the blink of an eye.

Storing laser light in a loop of fiber is actually quite straightforward. You can create a closed loop of fiber (by taking a long spool and splicing the two ends together) and then use evanescent coupling to inject and remove light into and out of the loop. Below is a simulation showing a small scale version of this. The light can be coupled from an external "fiber" (actually a waveguide in this case) into and out of a closed loop, without the fibers ever actually touching the loop.

The conclusion would be that there's a huuuge loss of light/signal in the fiber, because light travels incredibly fast.

Pretty cool concept.

 

[SergiusPaulus]

It would be neat to experiment with various mediums to trap it somehow. There’s a few articles out there. Different from the 9 or 6 shape idea. It’s a long article but interesting what I gathered from it. Trapping Light