Hau in Hawaiian refers to a large shrub or tree (Hibiscus tiliaceus, Family Malvaceae) that grows in generally wet areas and originally was brought to Hawai'i by the early settlers from elsewhere in Polynesia. The shrub is so large that it can cover an entire hill, and is often the ultimate jungle-gym for Hawaiian kids. The joke is that it was named after someone got lost inside. "How on earth did I get in, and How am I ever going to get out"?
Recently, the Hau group succeeded in reducing the light speed to 17 m/s (the speed of a racing bicycle) by optically inducing a quantum interference in a Bose-Einstein condensate.
The system also exhibits extreme optical properties: Hau's group has demonstrated a nonlinear refractive index which is 14 orders of magnitude larger that the nonlinear index in an optical fiber and the largest ever measured by a factor of a million.
Hau and collaborators were the first to suggest a wave-guide for cold atoms based on a mechanical structure.
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