Coherent single photons

Stimulated emission makes lasers excellent sources of large numbers of coherent photons, which is fine for most applications. But quantum information networks are a problem because they work best with coherent photons that come one at a time, and lasers generally are not amenable to generating single photons. Single-photon sources have been developed for quantum computing, but they lack the coherence needed to create quantum entanglement at a distance using quantum entanglement.

Now, a team at the Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge University (Cambridge, England) led by Mete Atature has found a way to generate single photons with laser-like coherence. Their starting point was optical pumping of quantum dots, which is one way of producing single photons. They first fabricated a Schottky diode containing self-assembled indium-arsenide quantum dots, which could be individually addressed with a pump laser to generate single photons by resonance fluorescence. Resonant fluorescence does not optically excite the host material, reducing interactions in the solid that decrease coherence of emitted photons, but charge fluctuations and other interactions remain to degrade coherence.

In Nature Communications they report avoiding photon decoherence by weak laser excitation, which generates photons primarily by elastic scattering. This avoided charge fluctuations, and allowed them to generate single photons from one quantum dot that remained coherent with the excitation laser for more than three seconds. Taking advantage of this mutual coherence, they report they could "synthesize near-arbitrary coherent photon waveforms by shaping the excitation laser field." That, in turn, let them show that as long as the photons emitted by the quantum dot remained coherent with the pump laser field, the separate photons were "fundamentally indistinguishable," so quantum interference among them can create quantum entanglement at a distance. That makes it possible to combine quantum computing with quantum communications, producing a more powerful tool for tasks such as quantum cryptography.

Ways to encode a qubit.

"The ability to generate quantum entanglement and  perform quantum teleportation between distant quantum-dot spin qubits with very high fidelity is now only a matter of time," says Atature. That's still a long way from science-fiction teleportation. However, the ability to generate single photons that maintain coherence well enough that they can be combined to produce novel waveforms may lead to real-world capabilities almost as attractive as avoiding airport lines.

Laser asteroid defense

Could lasers protect the Earth from wayward asteroids? A number of schemes have been proposed for pushing asteroids gradually to move their orbits away from the planet. Now, two California professors are proposing a bold scheme to build solar-powered space lasers powerful enough to evaporate a 500 m asteroid in about a year--or to make short work of a 17 m asteroid like the one that exploded near Chelyabinsk, Russia, on February 15.

Philip Lubin of the University of California (Santa Barbara, CA) and Gary Hughes of California Polytechnic State University (San Luis Obispo, CA) began planning the project they call DE-STAR--for Directed Energy Solar Targeting of Asteroids and exploRation--a year ago. On February 14, they issued a press release timed to the close approach by asteroid 2012 DA14. They were as stunned by the Russian explosion as everyone else.

Their bold proposal seeks to take advantage of the dramatic improvements in high-power diode lasers and solid-state lighting to build giant orbital phased arrays of lasers powered by electricity from huge solar panels. They envision starting with a desktop 1 m array called DE-STAR 0, then scaling up to a 10 m array called DE-STAR 1. They have proposed that NASA support a conceptual study of scaling up to a 10 km DE-STAR 4 array, powerful enough to vaporize a half-kilometer asteroid 150 million kilometers away. Even bigger versions could be used for laser propulsion; they estimate that a 1000 km DE-STAR 6 array could accelerate a 10 ton spacecraft close to the speed of light.

Future DE-STAR array samples composition of an asteroid as it propels an interplanetary spacecraft. (Courtesy of Philip Lubin)

The scheme may sound fantastic, but Lubin says it violates no laws of physics and requires no "technological miracles." It merely envisions continuing technological progress at the rate of the past 50 years, which took us from the feeble LEDs and diode lasers of 1963 to today's powerful emitters. They assume photovoltaic cells that can convert 70% of incident solar energy into electricity, and diodes which can convert 70% of the input electrical power into light.

Lubin doesn't think it will be easy. He worries about issues including the mass needed to build the giant array, and controlling output phase across the array with the precision needed to tightly focus the emission. But he predicts his assumptions will be considered "extraordinarily conservative and modest" in 30 to 50 years.

That remains to be seen, but space-based solar-powered diode arrays are worth investigating. They could go beyond asteroid defense to could help move asteroids, collect valuable materials from them, or provide power resources in space--as well as inspiring some fun science-fiction stories.