A bit of matter to light

2004/12/01 Elhuyar Zientzia Iturria: Elhuyar aldizkaria

• Fisika

In the most advanced computers, digital information is stored in atoms and photons. But so far it was not possible to transmit information from one support to another. Now, two physicists from the Georgia Institute of Technology (USA) have managed to pass material information to light, even if only a bit.

One of the problems to quantitatively channel communication is that information is stored in matter and transported to light, but it is about getting back and forth. These physicists have stored a quantum bit in a cloud of rubidium atoms and forced the information to be sent to a photon.

In particular, they have directed a laser beam to two mists of rubidium. In this way a photon is released in which the bits of physical information are recorded. The photon is correlated with mists, using the English terminology of quantum entangled mechanics, that is, if they modify the information of the photon, that of mists also changes in the same way.

This bit is stored in the fog a few hundred nanoseconds that, using the laser, force the mists to send another photon with the same quantum information.