World's shortest single photon pulse created (4/13/2008)
The world's shortest light pulse containing just one photon has been produced by Oxford University scientists.
The Oxford team can create individual photons that are 65 femtoseconds in duration: that's approximately fifty times shorter than any single photon previously produced. And every photon this source produces is identical to the previous one. Such photons could be a major breakthrough in quantum computing: the harnessing of quantum effects to perform calculations that would take conventional computers thousands of years to resolve.
'Creating single photons even under controlled conditions is extremely challenging,' said Peter Mosley of Oxford's Department of Physics. 'Even the purest laser light beam consists of many photons all bunched together. Our approach enables us to generate individual photon replicas, identical packets of light of very short duration that are ideal for quantum computing.'
Peter Mosley, a member of Oxford's Ultrafast Group, is a co-author of a report of the research in this week's Physical Review Letters.
Note: This story has been adapted from a news release issued by the University of Oxford
Comments:
| 1. |
nate |
4/26/2008 10:32:47 PM MST |
Thats amazing. Science, HO! |
| 2. |
Phil E. Drifter |
5/2/2008 4:01:04 AM MST |
Yeah, wait til the religitards hear about this. |
| 3. |
tetris11 |
5/4/2008 2:25:35 PM MST |
finally! took them long enough. though it will still take another 14 years for quantum computing to emerge from the labs. |
| 4. |
Parazitus |
5/4/2008 4:26:05 PM MST |
Just maybe quantum comps will arrive in time to save us from the lower bound in the size of the tranzistor which will be reached in a few years from what I can remember. Can anyone immagine the price drop in computation power once quantum comps kick in?
|
| 5. |
Levi |
5/7/2008 8:52:38 PM MST |
I am one of those religitards... I read this and think "Ain't God great?" |
| 6. |
onetwo |
5/8/2008 3:16:05 PM MST |
Levi - Good for you :). It's nice to see someone else who accepts that just because it's fantastic science doesn't mean it's not God's design in practise...
|
Leave a Reply:
| 
Subscribe
