Scientists manage to store quantum light in a single superatom in a controlled manner: a step towards the global quantum network
Chinese researchers manage to store a photon in a superatom and confirm the process without destroying it, a crucial advance towards simpler and scalable quantum networks
During a high school class, many students learn that light behaves like a wave and, at times, like a particle. What is rarely explained is that those tiny packets of light, photons, could be the keys to building a global quantum network. But there's a problem: storing a photon without destroying it is almost like catching a butterfly without touching its wings.
A group of Chinese scientists has just demonstrated that this is indeed possible. They have achieved this using a “superatom,” a cloud of atoms that acts as if it were a single quantum entity. In their article published in Physical Review Letters, they describe an experiment in which they managed to store a photon and generate a signal that confirms the success of that storage, without the need for interferometers or high-precision optical cavities.
$BNB
$SOL