Universality is a fundamental concept in physics that allows for the description of properties of systems that are independent of microscopic details. In this work, we demonstrate that the propagation of slow light in the form of a dark-state polariton can encode universal aspects of an impurity strongly coupled to a Bose-Einstein condensate. This unveils a nondemolition scheme to probe impurity physics beyond the quasiparticle properties. Based on a field theory that includes the two-body correlations at the exact level we demonstrate that under appropriate conditions, the damping rate of slow-light propagation reveals the high-energy universal tail in the polaron spectrum.

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• Bose-Einstein condensates
• Electromagnetically induced transparency
• Impurities
• Polaritons
• Polarons
• Ultracold gases