Yes - heaft was a typo... Daffy got it translated correctly: heft - "weight, solidity, and visceral power" My bad.
Does this in any way shed 'light' on why the reconstructed wave was not an exact copy of the original - it was 'weaker' because you can't get 100% back out? Then again, the stopped system has this extra potential (above and beyond the original sodium atoms + the original stopped wave). And then that was excited with a second laser (I assume adding more energy)...What was left over in the sodium atoms that wasn't there in the beginning?"
Without complicating this unnecessarily, let's just stick with the added energy input in the form of the second laser and residual electron voltage from the sodium. Summative to be sure. For an analogy, think of a latex ballon filled with helium. Not only do you have to input enough "physical helium" to fill the balloon, you have to put it in with enough pressure to exceed the atmospheric pressure of the surrounding space. Also, and this is the most oft forgotten part, your pressure has to be greater than the resistance supplied by the latex material. All of that elastic retraction is stored in the energy of the helium, not the latex. That is kinetic energy. So, in this story, we are stopping something with lasers and cooling. We wouldn't be stopping it if it wasn't trying to move - right? When the energy is removed from the laser it not only has the momentum it possessed prior to being stopped - it also has the kinetic energy usurped from the lasers that were 'stalling' it. Instantaneously, the material LEAPS TO LIFE again once the laser is shut off. A large part of the energy is lost due to the 'leap', but some still remains... Energy Conservation is a beautiful thing.
Majestron:
A given form of organized energy does not proceed in waves but in direct lines.
That's the part I'm having trouble conceptualizing, even though I fully? understand and "know" it. Like in an ocean wave, the wave is moving, but the individual water molecules are mostly just rising and falling. SO, are photons rising and falling, travelling in a straigh line, or both? They're obviously moving, slapping me in the retina, since I can read the drivel I type.
Don't get hung up on this - it's incorrect. Energy of every sort moves in both straight lines and waves. The two are not mutally exclusive. All objects move in straight lines until they are acted upon by another object from within or without their system of existence. Light around a sun bends due to gravity, but in this case only it's rotational symmetry is altered, not necessarily its trajectory. It is still moving in a straight line from a 90
o view! Same goes for magnetic field lines... Their paths are altered by the electromagnetic force, but they travel in geodesics... Staright lines that arc in circles. Ultimately, if we acknowledge that particles and waves do not change trajectory without being physically contacted, we are forced to admit that the fabic of space-time must warp for the effects to occur. Make sense?
Now - as for the "waving" that you are trying to make analogous with water: Stop it. You are unintentionally confusing yourself. Water waves do not help in this case. Perform a little experiment before you reply:
Go outside tonight. Take a healthy flashlight with you. Light a cigarette (I do not condone smoking) and blow the smoke into the beam of light you have focused onto the darkest spot you can find (not your neighbor's bedroom window). Watch the action of the smoke in the waves of light emanating from the end of the flash light. Note the actions further from the light's end. If you can manage, watch the action of the smoke outside of the beam and in the reflected light off the driveway or wall... Contemplate what you saw and reply. It helps if you have a Maglight quartz-halogen rechargeable with focusable beam, but any flashlight with a littel A$$ behind it will do the trick.
