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Single Microwave Photons Can Be Measured Nondestructively

OCT 01, 1999
Individual atoms passing through a microwave cavity can sense whether it contains zero photons or one—and leave the photon number unchanged.

A deeply held tenet of quantum mechanics, dating back to its infancy, is that one can’t measure a system without disturbing it. That doesn’t mean, however, that one can’t influence the form such a disturbance takes. Over the past 25 years, researchers have been developing schemes for controlling the effects of measurements so that the properties of interest emerge unscathed. Now a group led by Serge Haroche at the Ecole Normale Supérieure (ENS) in Paris has demonstrated such techniques at the most fundamental level—detecting the presence of a single photon in a nondestructive way.

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More about the authors

Richard J. Fitzgerald, rfitzger@aip.org

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This Content Appeared In
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Volume 52, Number 10

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