Trapped rainbows could speed up optical computing.

The article reports on an experiment conducted by Filbert Bartoli and Qiaoqiang Gan of Lehigh University in Pennsylvania which sought to trap rainbows of visible and infrared light. They simulated a silver grating 25 micrometers long with a dimension that changed over its length. This design slowed down the incoming light, with different frequencies trapped at different regions along the grating. The application of this technology on optical computing is discussed.