Store Two-Frame Short Movie In Gas Cloud - Courtesy Physicists At NIST

Physicists from the US National Institute of Standards and Technology have succeeded in storing a two-frame "short movie" in a cloud of rubidium gas as an affirmation to quantum memory. Quentin Glorieux's team employed a method that requires short blasts of light (photons) and clouds of rubidium gas. As soon as rubidium atoms are introduced to a magnetic field, their electronic energy levels divide to form further new levels. As the field is switched off, the atoms come back to their initial state.

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This setup could be used as a quantum memory device, by coding required information on the pulses of light, and reserving the same until required. When desired, the magnetic field is turned off, which makes the atoms hash out photon echo, and the information stored in them could be recovered. This technique has let the physicists store all the images for tens of milliseconds, with an 88% accuracy. As the gas proceeds too rapidly, the images can't be stored for long.

The team has made use of this method to store two images at once, which they refer to as a movie. Images of the alphabets T and N were coded into the gas and then recovered at varying times facilitating the storage of a two-frame "movie". A high-speed camera served this purpose. Their #-Link-Snipped-# shall be published in the <em>Optics</em> <em>Express</em>.

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