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Nature 452, 37-38 (6 March 2008) | doi:10.1038/452037a; Published online 5 March 2008

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Quantum physics: Tangled memories

Lene Vestergaard Hau1

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The latest quantum trick — mapping two entangled photon states onto two separate regions of an atomic cloud, and then retrieving them — could be a fillip for applications, among them quantum cryptography.

On page 67 of this issue, Choi et al.1 recount how they store two 'entangled' photon states in a memory consisting of a cloud of cold atoms, and then, after a certain delay, retrieve those self-same states from the cloud. The optical modes are stored in spatially separated regions of a single atom cloud, but there is no reason why the technique should not be used to imprint the same quantum states on two distinct atom clouds separated by a macroscopic distance.

  1. Lene Vestergaard Hau is in the Lyman Laboratory, Physics Department, Harvard University, 17 Oxford Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA.
    Email: hau@physics.harvard.edu