Tiny optical cavity could make quantum networks possible

Engineers at Caltech have shown that atoms in optical cavities—tiny boxes for light—could be foundational to the creation of a quantum internet. Their work was published on March 30 by the journal Nature.

Using noise to enhance optical sensing

In conventional sensing methods, noise is always a problem, especially in systems that are meant to detect changes in their environment that are hardly bigger or even smaller than the noise in the system. Encountering this ...

Generating high-quality single photons for quantum computing

MIT researchers have designed a way to generate, at room temperature, more single photons for carrying quantum information. The design, they say, holds promise for the development of practical quantum computers.

Mirrors control chemical selectivity

A chemical reaction transforms the molecules that make up matter. To influence chemical reactions, chemists typically act on the molecules themselves, rather than the space in which the reaction takes places. However, researchers ...

Putting photons in jail

A miniature prison for photons—that is the nanocavity discovered by scientists of the University of Twente. It is an extremely small cavity surrounded by an optical crystal, a structure of pores etched in two perpendicular ...

Engineers build smallest integrated Kerr frequency comb generator

Optical frequency combs can enable ultrafast processes in physics, biology, and chemistry, as well as improve communication and navigation, medical testing, and security. The Nobel Prize in Physics 2005 was awarded to the ...

Vacuum technology makes gravitational waves detectable

You probably didn't notice the gravitational wave that propagated through the Earth in the early morning of Jan. 4, 2017, but thanks to a sophisticated use of vacuum technology, a pair of extremely sensitive laser interferometers, ...

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