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How many bits can a photon carry?

Nature Photonics volume 6, pages 14–15 (2012)Cite this article

Quantum physics offers a way to enhance the amount of information a photon can carry, with potential applications in optical communication, lithography, metrology and imaging.

Light is a popular medium for transmitting data, but how many bits of information can a single photon carry? It turns out that the answer is many, thanks to quantum entanglement and the photon's many degrees of freedom, including frequency, time of arrival, and spin. The most pressing question, however, is whether these properties can be practically exploited to enhance applications such as imaging, communications and lithography. Furthermore, would such improvements be marginal, or span many orders of magnitude? These questions were among those explored at the 95th annual meeting of the Optical Society of America, Frontiers in Optics 2011. The meeting, co-located with Laser Science XXVII (the annual meeting of the American Physical Society's Division of Laser Science), took place in San Jose, California, USA, on 16–20 October 2011.

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  1. David Pile is senior editor at Nature Photonics, 225 Bush Street, Suite 1453, San Francisco, California 94104, USA,

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Pile, D. How many bits can a photon carry?. Nature Photon 6, 14–15 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphoton.2011.330

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