High-Capacity Photon Storage

Scientists at the University of Rochester have stored an entire image-worth of data within a single photon, promising unsurpassed quantities of data storage for the era of quantum computing that lies before us.

The parallel amount of information John has sent all at once in an image is enormous in comparison to what anyone else has done before, said Alan Willner, professor of electrical engineering at the University of Southern California and president of the IEEE Lasers and Optical Society. To do that and be able to maintain the integrity of the signal-it's a wonderful achievement. While Howell's research has certainly set a precedent in optical buffering, the storage of the UR seen above is only the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Howell's team is now working toward the goal of delaying pulses for several milliseconds, which would allow even broader uses of buffered data. Perhaps more ambitious is their intent to store as many as 10,000 pulses of information, essentially an entire archive of such photos as seen above, within a proton for a single nanosecond. Added Howell:

Now I want to see if we can delay something almost permanently, even at the single photon level. If we can do that, we're looking at storing incredible amounts of information in just a few photons.

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