Pondermotive forces with slow light.
This work describes atomic processes which result from the greatly enhanced longitudinal gradient force which is inherent to the propagation of slow light. These processes are (1) ballistic atom motion and atom surfing, and (2) a type of local pondermotive nonlinearity or scattering which results from free-particle sinusoidal motion and the density variation caused by this motion.
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Edward L. Ginzton Laboratory, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305, USA.