Capturing single photons to explore fundamental physics and quantum information science

Quantum optics, where light and matter interactions are examined at the microscopic level, has earned Nobel prizes—including three awarded since 2001—for some of science’s biggest names. However, even in this mature field, some interesting physics remains largely unexplored. An international team of scientists from Technische Universität Wien (Austria), Duke University, Università degli Studi di Palermo and Istituto Nanoscienze CNR (Italy), and the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory has unveiled a new approach for photon trapping that can localize and store one photon, providing another option for unraveling complicated physics and manipulating the quantum state of single photons. Their work was recently published in Physical Review Letters.

Source:
https://phys.org/news/2019-05-capturing-photons-explore-fundamental-physics.html