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.

Nobel Prize for quantum optics

The award of the 2012 Nobel Prize in Physics to Serge Haroche and David Wineland is the latest in a series of Nobel Prizes honoring elegant experiments using light to illuminate fundamental physics. The Swedish Academy of Sciences cited the two "for ground-breaking experimental methods that enable measuring and manipulation of individual quantum systems." By examining individual photons and atoms, they resolved big questions about quantum mechanics.

Physicists long wondered how seriously they should take the paradoxes that arise from applying quantum mechanics rigorously to the behavior of individual particles. Albert Einstein famously called the concept of entangled particles "spooky action at a distance," but recent experiments have shown that such entanglement is real, and can be used for quantum encryption. Other recent experiments have observed quantum behavior of individual particles, and manipulated that behavior so that quantum states can be superposed for purposes such as quantum computing.

Haroche and Wineland developed complementary techniques for quantum manipulation of single particles. Haroche pioneered cavity quantum electrodynamics, which studies how an electromagnetically resonant cavity can affect quantum properties of an atom contained inside it, including spontaneous and stimulated emission. Working with microwave and optical cavities, his group measured photon properties without destroying the quantum states. Wineland and his colleagues used light to trap ions in ways that allowed them to transfer and superpose states of an ion. They were able to create single-quantum "Schrödinger's cat" states in the laboratory and watch them change from a quantum superposition to a classical mixture. Their work has opened the door to quantum computing and new types of optical clocks. 

Haroche holds the chair in Quantum Physics at the Collége de France (Paris, France), and is well-known for his research in quantum optics and quantum computing, and for his major contributions to cavity quantum electrodynamics, the behavior of atoms and light in high-Q cavities. He is work has earned him a long list of awards, including the Townes Award in 2007 from the Optical Society of America and the Herbert Walther Award from the German Physical Society and OSA in 2010. His deep roots in the optics community include doing his doctoral dissertation under Claude Cohen-Tannoudji and postdoctoral research under Arthur Schawlow, both future Nobel laureates. 

Wineland wrote his doctoral dissertation at Harvard University under Norman Ramsay, another Nobel Laureate, and heads the ion-storage group at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (Boulder, CO). He demonstrated the first laser cooling in 1978, and has used that technique to study quantum mechanics and develop applications. He demonstrated the first single-atom quantum logic gate in 1995, showing the potential of quantum computing, and later demonstrated entanglement of two and four ions. Other achievements include demonstrating quantum teleportation and a quantum logic atomic clock, which is now the world's most precise atomic clock. His long list of awards includes the Schawlow award in laser science from the American Physical Society, OSA's Frederick Ives award, and the first Herbert Walther award in 2008.

David Wineland has won the 2012 Nobel Prize in Physics, along with Serge Haroche. (Image courtesy of
Geoffrey Wheeler/NIST)

NIF falls short of ignition

The National Ignition Facility (NIF) will not meet its goal of igniting a fusion plasma before the end of September, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (Livermore, CA) said on Friday. A spokeswoman says Livermore "will continue working toward achieving ignition." The laser is delivering the desired energy, but the target shots are not yielding the expected fusion energy.

NIF was declared complete on March 31, 2009, after it had delivered 1.1 MJ pulses at 355 nm. The 192-beam system was designed to deliver 1.8 MJ pulses, which simulations indicated would be sufficient to ignite a pellet of deuterium-tritium fusion fuel, producing fusion reactions that yielded more energy than the input pulse. The Department of Energy set a target of reaching ignition by September 30, 2012--the end of the fiscal year.

Wary of optical damage, Livermore ramped pulse power and energy slowly. The first 1.8 MJ pulse was not fired until March of this year. On July 5, NIF delivered peak power of 500 tW to a target for the first time in a 1.85 MJ pulse. From outside, it looked like NIF should be closing in on ignition.

But now NIF has become the latest in a long list of fusion lasers that yielded experimental results well short of predictions. A news story in the September 21 issue of Science magazine reports that although computer models predict NIF shots should achieve ignition, the yield of fusion energy from NIF experiments has so far reached only 0.1 of the ignition level.

The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) has already begun studying its options. The first draft of a report is due October 1, with a final report due to Congress on November 30.

Meanwhile, NIF continues firing shots that can produce temperatures and pressures far beyond anything previously possible on the surface of the Earth. Livermore fusion researchers will keep pressing for ignition, and NNSA weapon scientists will get additional shots for their simulations of nuclear explosions as part of the agency's Stockpile Stewardship program.

NIF's laser bay, showing 96 of the 192 beamlines.