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A Single-Photon Server

Posted by Zonk on from the is-that-an-ai-in-your-eyelash dept.

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. "

16 of 75 comments (clear)

  1. Headline? by MrNaz · · Score: 5, Funny

    Headline reading "Single photon server" + the supercomputing article logo = Confused readers

    Before I read the sumary I was thinking they'd managed to install Apache on a photon. So yea, with regards to photons, they're cool and all, but do they run Linux?

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    1. Re:Headline? by bmgoau · · Score: 5, Funny

      I wonder if this "Photon Server" can survive a slashdoting.

    2. Re:Headline? by seizium · · Score: 3, Funny

      I can see the headlines now. "Scientists blinded by photon server" "Scientists install photon server into a lighthouse" "Scientists make contact with extra terestrials thanks to new lighthouse" "Mankind wiped out - Slashdot blamed"

    3. Re:Headline? by Alsee · · Score: 2, Funny

      The phrase "photon server" struck me as a bit odd... and then reading the article I came across "photons can be distributed to a user" and I couldn't help wondering if they planned to profile their users and serve photons with targeted banner ads embedded.

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  2. Binary by xarak · · Score: 5, Funny


    I can see the two states; photon=1, photoff=0.

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    Atheism is a non-prophet organisation
  3. Imagine... by yootje · · Score: 4, Funny

    A Beowulf cluster of THESE! That would be something.

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    My photo's.
  4. single photon optics by picob · · Score: 5, Funny

    Very useful, especially in combination with the Single-Pixel Camera:
    http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/01/ 18/2117243

  5. But... by kitsunewarlock · · Score: 2, Funny

    Is the security good enough? How much space does it have? And, most importantly, how big are the cables that attach to this thing?

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    Ginga no Rekshiya Mata Each page.
  6. Is Roland Piquepaille paid for Slashdot stories? by Futurepower(R) · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Roland_Piquepaille, the submitter of this story, is apparently a publicist. Apparently he is paid to have stories placed in media like Slashdot.

    Mr. Piquepaille's affiliations and motivations should be disclosed. Does he pay someone at Slashdot to run his stories?

    Also, for me, computing is an important area of continuing interest. Most of Mr. Piquepaille's stories, like this one, have very little real connection to computing, so they waste my time. I'm not the only one annoyed by this, apparently: Here is a script to Hide stories submitted by Roland Piquepaille from Slashdot.org.

    Digg.com or Reddit.com are more appropriate media for Mr. Piquepaille. However, I suspect that his stories would seldom be considered interesting enough to be placed on the Digg or Reddit front pages.

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  7. Re:Is Roland Piquepaille paid for Slashdot stories by david.given · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Roland_Piquepaille, the submitter of this story, is apparently a publicist. Apparently he is paid to have stories placed in media like Slashdot.

    Remind me why this is bad, again? Given that his stories do tend to be fairly interesting, does it really matter if he's making money by submitting them here?

  8. Wow! by edwardpickman · · Score: 5, Funny

    Just imagine what they could do with two photons!

  9. Re:Is Roland Piquepaille paid for Slashdot stories by DancesWithBlowTorch · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.)

  10. Somewhat related, this is even more interesting by Tetard · · Score: 2, Interesting

    http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/node/1101

  11. NOTE: Number of links *changed* by siglercm · · Score: 4, Informative

    Further, this story has only one single link: To the institutes press release. I was very interested to see only one link in this story when posted. I saw the story last night in Firehose as submitted by Roland. It included two links, the second of which pointed back to his own blog. Because of that, I voted it down.

    Comments on the last Roland story commended him for not including a link back to his blog, which includes ads. As posted, this story doesn't have such a link either, but not because Roland didn't try his hardest.... I'm glad that Slashdot editors redacted his link-whoring.

    If you're as tired of these (indirectly) revenue generating pieces as I am, please join me and tag them as "ohnoitsroland" -- I'm doing that to all of his submissions now.
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    sigfault (core dumped)
  12. Re:Is Roland Piquepaille paid for Slashdot stories by Lord_Dweomer · · Score: 2, Insightful
    The problem isn't that he is paid to have stories placed in media. That is called PR. The problem is that most of Slashdot suspects he is paying off the editors or has some sort of special relationship that allows him to get regularly posted and there is ZERO disclosure about it and none of the editors will say a word about it in response to all the hundreds of negative Roland posts that are made.

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  13. Re:Is Roland Piquepaille paid for Slashdot stories by arpy · · Score: 2, Informative

    none of the editors will say a word about it in response to all the hundreds of negative Roland posts that are made

    That's not quite true.