Scientists Finally Manipulate Quantum Light, Fulfilling Einstein's 107-Year-Old Dream

"Hearst Magazines and Yahoo may earn commission or revenue on some items through these links."

• Albert Einstein's stimulated emission theory has been validated by large amounts of light, but never before by individual photons.

• New research offers the ability to manipulate and identify single photons, allowing for the manipulation of quantum light.

• Continued development of this technology has the potential to lead to huge advancements in quantum computing.

Scientists stand ready to manipulate quantum light, just as Albert Einstein envisioned in 1916.

Researchers from the University of Sydney and the University of Basel successfully managed to manipulate and identify small numbers of interacting photons—packets of light energy. According to the team, this work represents an unprecedented landmark development for quantum technologies.

Stimulated light emission—a theory first proposed by Einstein in 1916 that helps explain how photons can trigger atoms to emit other photons—laid the basis for the invention of the laser (Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation). It’s long been understood for large numbers of photons, but this new research has allowed scientists to both observe and effect stimulated emission for single photons for the first time. Researchers measured the direct time delay between one photon and a pair of bound photons scattering off a single quantum dot, a type of artificially created atom.

“This opens the door to the manipulation of what we can call ‘quantum light,’” Sahand Mahmoodian, of the University of Sydney School of Physics and joint lead author of a research paper published in Nature Physics, says in a news release. “This fundamental science opens the pathway for advances in quantum-enhanced measurement techniques and photonic quantum computing.