A French team of physicists have recently succeeded in trapping a single photon in a box on the time scale of seconds and have detected this photon many times without destroying it.

This development has led to a new sector called 'Cavity quantum electrodynamics' - a sub-field of quantum optics - to be highlighted.

Speaking at the EPL symposium 'Physics In Our Times' held yesterday at the Fondation Del Duca de l’Institut de France, Paris Professor Serge Haroche from the Collège de France and the École Normale Supérieure in Paris explained how he and his colleagues manipulated and controlled single atoms and single photons interacting in a cavity, which is a box made of highly reflecting walls.

By studying the behaviour of these atoms and photons in this protected environment, the physicists can illustrate fundamental aspects of quantum theory, such as state superpositions, complementarity and decoherence.

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--MagiQ Technologies, Inc., the quantum information processing (QIP) company, today announced success of their 3 year joint venture program. The QCV joint venture has produced the world’s first commercial source of single photons (single particles of light), which are a crucial component of quantum communication systems. MagiQ will collaborate in development and will participate in the sales and marketing of these new products.

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He who wants to see and describe living creatures, does so without recognizing the spirit. He holds all parts in his hand but lacks the spiritual bond. J.W. von Goethe

Consultancy is in comparison to other services a very young product. Mainly large American companies have been responsible for its introduction into Europe. However, the initial excitement about classic consultancy has faded since from today’s retrospective, results have not always fulfilled the companies’ expectations. Hence, consultancy finds itself at a turning point needing to redefine itself.

Traditional consultancy considers only measurable parameters and processes. Just like the human organism whose whole is more than the sum of its cells, these traditional procedures meet only the requirements of the formal and not the informal part of a company. Similar to people where the formal beauty must give way to informal charm: a company’s characteristics not obvious from the outside are often more important. It then becomes clearer that logical, causal and rational thinking can therefore not always interpret the difference between success and failure sufficiently.