Boffins at the University of Santa Barbara have had a bit of a breakthrough in the quantum control of photons, the energy quanta of light. They think it could be eventually have implications in banking, drug design, and Quantum computing.

According to the journal Nature, which our editor bought thinking it was a naturalist magazine, UCSB physics researchers Max Hofheinz, John Martinis, and Andrew Cleland used a superconducting electronic circuit known as a Josephson phase qubit to prepare highly unusual quantum states using microwave-frequency photons. In the experiments, the photons were stored in a microwave cavity, a "light trap" in which the light bounces back and forth as if between two mirrors.

They had already worked out they could create and store photons, one at a time, with up to 15 photons stored at one time in the light trap. Now they can create states in which the light trap simultaneously has different numbers of photons stored in it. This means they can have simultaneously have zero, three, and six photons at the same time.

By measuring the quantum state by counting how many photons are stored and dividing by your shoe size the trap is forced to "decide" how many there are. Since it is all a quantum superposition, all three outcomes possible and a cat is both alive and dead and wanting its dinner.

The boffins say their research is leading to the construction of a quantum computer, which will have applications in information encryption and in solving or simulating problems that are not amenable to solution using standard computers.