{"id":30650,"date":"2016-09-30T13:47:35","date_gmt":"2016-09-30T20:47:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2016\/09\/jedi-scientists-freeze-light-in-midair-to-bring-quantum-computers-a-step-closer-to-reality"},"modified":"2017-04-24T19:33:08","modified_gmt":"2017-04-25T02:33:08","slug":"jedi-scientists-freeze-light-in-midair-to-bring-quantum-computers-a-step-closer-to-reality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2016\/09\/jedi-scientists-freeze-light-in-midair-to-bring-quantum-computers-a-step-closer-to-reality","title":{"rendered":"Jedi scientists freeze light in midair to bring quantum computers a step closer to reality"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<p><iframe style=\"display: block; margin: 0 auto; width: 100%; aspect-ratio: 4\/3; object-fit: contain;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/jW_80CmdV_k?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope;\n   picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Remember that scene in \u201cThe Force Awakens\u201d where the dark side warrior Kylo Ren stops a laser blast in mid-air? In a Canberra laboratory, physicists have managed a feat almost as magical: they froze the movement of light in a cloud of ultracold atoms. This discovery could help bring optical quantum computers from the realms of sci-fi to reality.<\/p>\n<p>The experiment, published in a paper this week, was inspired by a computer stimulation run by lead researcher Jesse Everett from the Australian National University. The researchers used a vaporized cloud of ultracold rubidium atoms to create a light trap, into which they shone infrared lasers. The light trap constantly emitted and re-captured the light.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s clear that the light is trapped \u2013 there are photons circulating around the atoms,\u201d Everett says. \u201cThe atoms absorbed some of the trapped light, but a substantial proportion of the photons were frozen inside the atomic cloud.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><!-- Link: <a href=\"http:\/\/newatlas.com\/scientists-freeze-light-like-kylo-ren\/45621\/\">http:\/\/newatlas.com\/scientists-freeze-light-like-kylo-ren\/45621\/<\/a> --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Remember that scene in \u201cThe Force Awakens\u201d where the dark side warrior Kylo Ren stops a laser blast in mid-air? In a Canberra laboratory, physicists have managed a feat almost as magical: they froze the movement of light in a cloud of ultracold atoms. This discovery could help bring optical quantum computers from the realms [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":413,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1523,48,1617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30650","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computing","category-particle-physics","category-quantum-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30650","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/413"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30650"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30650\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39198,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30650\/revisions\/39198"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}