Atoms tend to stay put, but light is always on the move. Physicists would like to exploit those qualities to make information-processing devices in which atoms store information and light shuttles it around (SN: 4/3/99, p. 220). In a step toward that goal, researchers have transmitted quantum states between atoms and light.
TELEPORTATION CHAMBER. During experiments conducted when this chamber was closed, quantum states leaped from a laser pulse to a cloud of cesium atoms like the pink one shown trapped in a glass tube.
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