A Single-Photon Server

Roland Piquepaille writes "A team of German physicists at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics has built a single-photon server with just one atom. They've trapped ultra cold atoms of rubidium in a vacuum chamber and applied laser pulses from one side. The generated photons were of 'high quality,' meaning their energy was very similar from one test to another, and that their properties could be controlled. The researchers think this new way to generate single photons will help the field of quantum information processing. "

Comments

Re:Is Roland Piquepaille paid for Slashdot stories

[DancesWithBlowTorch]

While I've heard of Piquepaille before, I think this specific story is somewhat different.

The Max Planck Society is a public foundation (a wierd legal construction in Germany. In a nutshell: it's a federal agency) and certainly does not have to care about outside sources of funding enough to try publicity stunts (disclaimer: I work at a Max Planck Institute, though a different one than the one linked here. Funding is generous compared to other scientific workplaces and constant over long periods of time. Partly as a consequence, the number of applicants for PhD and PostDoc positions is long enough. There's no need to advertise on /.).

Further, this story has only one single link: To the institutes press release. From what I see, there are no redirects involved, especially not to Mr Piquepaille's blog, and the linked site contains no adverts (which, if otherwise, would be very strange indeed, coming from an MPI).

Last but not least: The research in question was published in Nature (Physics online) last week. That's about as much publicity as you want as a scientist.

So, I see where you're coming from, but I don't think this is an attempt to generate traffic. You also say you don't think stories like this should be published on /. as they be not connected to computing. Well, it's certainly news for nerds. (second disclaimer: I'm a physicist.)