Abstract
It is well known that the group velocity vg of a light pulse can exceed c in an anomalously dispersive medium. As discussed many years ago by Sommerfeld and Brillouin,1 a group velocity greater than c does not violate causality because it is not the velocity of information transmission.' They noted that the "frontal velocity," the velocity at which an infinitely sharp step-function-like disturbance of the light intensity propagates, can serve as a velocity of information transfer.
© 2001 Optical Society of America
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