Light can be slowed down to a walking pace and even stopped in a medium of hot rubidium vapour. If an electromagnet was placed in this medium and turned on would the popagation of the magnetic field be slowed down or stopped?

Alduccii2

Alduccii2

Answered question

2022-07-16

Light can be slowed down to a walking pace and even stopped in a medium of hot rubidium vapour. If an electromagnet was placed in this medium and turned on would the popagation of the magnetic field be slowed down or stopped?

Answer & Explanation

Jeroronryca

Jeroronryca

Beginner2022-07-17Added 13 answers

The slower speed of light waves in a media can be thought of as an emergent effect of the underlying QM involving real photons - that always travel at the same speed between interactions.
Virtual photons don't travel in the way commonly thought of for real photons - it's more that there is a probability of an electromagnetic interaction represented by a particle term in the perturbation theory. In Field theory they appear as disturbances in the field with a different symmetry to the real ones.
At a beginner level it is probably best to think of virtual particles as intermediate steps in a calculation.

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