Internet can achieve quantum speed with light saved as sound

Quantum Data:

Researchers at the University of Copenhagen’s Niels Bohr Institute have developed a new way to create quantum memory: A small drum can store data sent with light in its sonic vibrations, and then forward the data with new light sources when needed again. The results demonstrate that mechanical memory for quantum data could be the strategy that paves the way for an ultra-secure internet with incredible speeds.

Just beneath Niels Bohr's old office is a basement where scattered tables are covered with small mirrors, lasers and an agglomeration of all types of devices connected by webs of wires and heaps of tape. It looks like a child’s project gone too far, one that their parents have tried in vain to get them to clean up.

While it is difficult for the untrained eye to discern that these tables are actually the home to an array of world-leading research projects, the important stuff is happening within worlds so small that not even Newton's laws apply. This is where Niels Bohr's quantum physical heirs are developing the most cutting-edge of quantum technologies.

One of these projects stands out – for physicists at least – by the fact that a gizmo visible to the naked eye is able to achieve quantum states. The quantum drum is a small membrane made of a ceramic, glass-like material with holes scattered in a neat pattern along its edges…