Physicists Convert Light Pulses Into Matter for Quantum Communications Published Aug. 29, 2007 By Air Force Office of Scientific Research AFOSR ARLINGTON, Va. -- AFRL-sponsored physicists at Harvard University (Cambridge, Massachusetts) have--for the first time--halted a light pulse and regenerated it in a new location. This research is of consequence to the future of the Air Force because it could provide a powerful technique for fiber-optic communication and quantum information processing, which are important in encryption. Researchers accomplished the conversion by stopping a light pulse in a supercooled sodium cloud, a Bose-Einstein Condensate (BEC), and then storing the pulse's data before extinguishing it. In the next phase of the technique, the information associated with the original optical pulse transforms into a matter wave traveling at 200 meters per hour. This matter wave travels to a second BEC, transferring the information between the two supercooled clouds. By illuminating the second cloud with a control laser, researchers revived the light pulse, which subsequently sped up and traveled out of the second BEC.