Technology Industry
Industry: Email Alert RSS FeedLight step toward quantum networks
Science News, Nov 13, 2004
Researchers are striving to use quantum physics to store, manipulate, and transmit data to someday create extraordinarily powerful and secure computer networks. Now, physicists in Atlanta have demonstrated the quantum version of one of the most basic network functions: reading a bit from a computer's memory so that it can be sent through a communications channel.
Dzmitry N. Matsukevich and Alex Kuzmich of the Georgia Institute of Technology describe the feat in the Oct. 22 Science.
Unlike conventional bit reading, the procedure manipulates quantum data bits, or qubits, which can each simultaneously represent a 0 and a 1. In a likely architecture for quantum networks, individual or small aggregates of atoms or ions will act as qubits for storage and calculations, whereas photons will serve as communications qubits between the atoms or ions.
Most RecentTechnology Articles
In the new experiment, the researchers forced a cloud of ultracold rubidium-85 atoms into a specific quantum state. Then, they triggered those atoms to collectively emit one photon endowed with its own version of the cloud's quantum state.
"For the first time ... we've transferred a matter qubit to a photon qubit," Kuzmich says. Next to come, he adds, is the converse operation. --P.W.
CIO SessionsVision Series on ZDNet
Brought to you by CBS MoneyWatch.com
- 10 Best Places to Retire
- Companies with the Best 401(k) Plans
- Most Important Document for Your Heirs? It's Not Your Will
- Video: Should You Expect to Retire Rich?
- Over 50? Here's How to Get (and Keep) a Great Job
Most Recent Reference Articles
- Not Part of the Public: Non-indigenous policies and the health of indigenous South Australians 1836-1973
- Homophobia: An Australian History
- Social inclusion and sport: culturally diverse women's perspectives
- Who to serve? The ethical dilemma of employment consultants in nonprofit disability employment network organisations
- Vocational education, self-employment and burnout among Australian workers


