A group of Danish researchers under professor Eugene Polzik at the Niels Bohr Institute (NBI) of the University of Copenhagen have taken an important step by teleporting between light and atoms. The group's breakthrough has been published in the prestigious journal Nature on the 5th of October 2006.
The aim of the research in teleportation is not to be able to 'beam' a person from one planet to another as it is done in science fiction movies. Rather, the goal is to develop the future's quantum communication network, which will be based on teleportation of information. It would be a novel type of communication network that will be able to transmit much larger amounts of information absolutely securely.
The experiment at the NBI is the first demonstration of teleportation where light is used as the carrier of information and an atomic object containing thousands of billions of atoms is used as the storage of that information.

More info on the experiment here
. On the 11th of October Eugene Polzik will give a Niels Bohr Institute Talk on "Quantum teleportation between light and matter". The lecture will be held at the H.C. Ørsted Institute in Auditorium 2 at 15:15 with refreshments afterwards.

The Danish National Research Foundation has granted 48 million Danish Kroner to The Danish Center for Quantum Optics, for the period 2006-2011. The grant was awarded on the basis of the review by a high profiled "International Evaluation Panel" who concluded that "QUANTOP has worked extremely successful and has established it self as one of the worlds leading centers in its field". The Center, which is located at the Niels Bohr Institute and at the University of Aarhus, has plans to extend its research further in the field of quantum information processes with atoms, light and solid state materials as well as in ultra-cold atomic gases. The final negotiations commence this autumn and QUANTOP's new grant term begins in August 2006.

To mark the occasion QUANTOP's "NBI-branch" invites colleagues to celebrate with us on the 23rd of September at 15:00 in the Quantum Optics Labs on Blegdamsvej 17.

The quantum memory for light experiment deals with the fundamental question: given an unknown input state of light, can this be stored with high precision in atoms? The answer is yes, and we demonstrate this experimentally. The results have recently been published in Nature 432, 482 (2004) together with a News and Views summary (Nature 432, 453 (2004)).

More info on the Experiment here.