Researchers at the University of Rochester have made a breakthrough that allows them to encode an entire image onto a photon.
The image was made using a single pulse of light and the team can fit as many as a hundred of these pulses at once into a tiny, four-inch cell.
"It sort of sounds impossible, but instead of storing just ones and zeros, we're storing an entire image," says John Howell, associate professor of physics and leader of the team that created the device, which is revealed in today's online issue of the journal Physical Review Letters. "It's analogous to the difference between snapping a picture with a single pixel and doing it with a
camera"
"You can have a tremendous amount of information in a pulse of light, but normally if you try to buffer it, you can lose much of that information," says Ryan Camacho, Howell's graduate student and lead author on the article. "We're showing it's possible to pull out an enormous amount of information with an extremely high signal-to-noise ratio even with very low light levels."
The image was made using a single pulse of light and the team can fit as many as a hundred of these pulses at once into a tiny, four-inch cell.
"It sort of sounds impossible, but instead of storing just ones and zeros, we're storing an entire image," says John Howell, associate professor of physics and leader of the team that created the device, which is revealed in today's online issue of the journal Physical Review Letters. "It's analogous to the difference between snapping a picture with a single pixel and doing it with a
camera"
"You can have a tremendous amount of information in a pulse of light, but normally if you try to buffer it, you can lose much of that information," says Ryan Camacho, Howell's graduate student and lead author on the article. "We're showing it's possible to pull out an enormous amount of information with an extremely high signal-to-noise ratio even with very low light levels."
2 comments:
It is impossible to make an image with only one photon. If we could, we would not need flash bulbs or large
telescope to look at stars. The writer of this story does not know what he is talking about.
I think you should re read the story. Its not about making a picture with one photon...It is taking the supposition that a photon being a physical object can be inscribed with data. My comment about one pixel was by example that if a whole picture could be INSCRIBED on a photon, it would be something quite like using one pixel to hold all the data of a picture. Saying this can't be done is fundamentally flawed. Needing flashbulbs has all to do with taking a picture and nothing about storing a picture. You need location not light to do so.
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