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01.24.07
High-Capacity Photon Storage
 By Mike Zazaian
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.
Led by Associate Professor of Physics John Howell the team projected light through a stencil into a 4-inch cube of cesium gas. Upon entering the cube, the image was slowed and compressed, allowing over 100 compressed and slowed images to be stored within the same cell.
It sort of sounds impossible, but instead of storing just ones and zeros, we're storing an entire image, said Howell. It's analogous to the difference between snapping a picture with a single pixel and doing it with a camera-this is like a 6-megapixel camera.
Optical buffering, the process of storing data within photons, has been a hot topic within the computer industry because of the speed boosts it promises in regard to both processing and networking. While other researchers have successfully store data in photons, matters of signal distortion and refraction have made it impossible to retrieve data in the same state at which it was stored. Howell's new method, however, preserves all of the original properties of photon pulses, and allows that data to be manipulated within the 100 nanosecond time frame in which the proton is kept in stasis.
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.
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About the Author:
Mike Zazaian is the Editor-in-Chief and Webmaster of TechFreep.com, an online publication dedicated to daily technology and science news. He holds a bachelor's degree from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where he majored in Film and Video studies with a sub-concentration in screenwriting. While only a minority of Mike's formal education encompassed the technology field, he has worked as a web developer, a freelance web designer, and has been a tech enthusiast for the better part of his life.
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