It is reported in the December 2008 issue of the IEEE Spectrum that the physicists of the University of Geneva have made a device for storing photons. The device is solid-state and it is capable of storing photons for approximately 1 microsecond.

Compared to the method previously announced by the team from Georgia Tech (storing quantum information in very cold rubidium atoms), the Swiss method should be more practical, because it relies on a solid-state device and does not need to be cooled near the absolute zero.

Led by Nicolas Gisin, researchers Mikael Afzelius, Hugues de Riedmatten, Christoph Simon and Matthias Staudt have beamed entangled photons from a diode laser to a Nd:YVO4 (neodimium orthovanadate) crystal cooled to 3 K. The photons were stored for about 1 microsecond, and the released photons were also entangled.

References

[209-1] "Physicists Invent a Chip That Stores a Photon's Quantum State," by Saswato R. Das in December 2008 issue of the IEEE Spectrum Online's News Analysis

¦ 209