Turning Circles

Researchers used Hyperball's 14 sensitive detectors to show that a strange quark dramatically shrinks the size of a nucleus. Image Credit: H. Tamura/Tohoku Univ.

Quantum communication schemes using light normally rely on the two types of photon polarization to encode information a bit at a time. But if researchers could efficiently measure a photon's orbital angular momentum, which can take an infinite number of different values, they could conceivably pack much more information into a light beam. A team of physicists has recently reported a way of sorting individual photons according to their orbital angular momentum, which could allow them to make use of all that extra data.

Read more about this research at Physical Review Focus.