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Quantum physics

Wave goodbye

Nature volume 448, pages 872–873 (2007)Cite this article

When measuring photons, it's a case of 'wanted, dead' — catching them alive is not an option. But we can observe how a superposition of many photon waves progressively collapses as it interacts with a beam of atoms.

Earlier this year, a team from the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris recorded jumps of light heralding the birth and death of a photon trapped in a cavity1. As they describe in this issue (Guerlin et al., page 889)2, the same researchers have now performed a similar, more complex trick — recording exactly how a coherent state of many photons collapses as it is measured.

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Figure 1: State surveillance.

References

  1. Gleyzes, S. et al. Nature 446, 297–300 (2007).

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  3. Raimond, J. M., Brune, M. & Haroche, S. Rev. Mod. Phys. 73, 565–582 (2001).

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  1. Department of Physics, Luis A. Orozco is at the Joint Quantum Institute, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland 20742, USA. lorozco@umd.edu,

    Luis A. Orozco

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  1. Luis A. Orozco
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Orozco, L. Wave goodbye. Nature 448, 872–873 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1038/448872a

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