Communications of the ACM
Don’t Call It Vaporware: Scientists Use Cloud of Atoms as Optical Memory Device
A new method for storing visual information within a thin vapor of rubidium atoms could prove helpful in creating memory technologies for quantum computers.
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Researchers at the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology's Joint Quantum Institute (JQI) and the University of Maryland have demonstrated a method for storing visual images within a thin vapor of rubidium atoms, a breakthrough they say could prove helpful in creating memory technologies for quantum computers.
The research builds on an approach developed at the Australian National University, in which scientists demonstrated that a rubidium vapor could be manipulated using magnetic fields and lasers. The vapor is housed in a tube and magnetized, and a laser pulse comprised of multiple light frequencies is fired through the tube. The energy level of each rubidium atom changes depending on which frequency hits it, and these changes within the vapor become a signature of the pulse's characteristics.
"By modifying their technique, we have been able to store a simple image in the vapor and extract pieces of it at different times," says JQI's Paul Lett. However, because atoms in a vapor are always in motion, the image can only be stored for about 10 milliseconds. "Measuring what the rubidium atoms do as we manipulate them is teaching us how we might use them as quantum bits and what problems those bits might present," Lett says.
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