A Single-Photon Server 75
Roland Piquepaille writes "A team of German physicists at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics has built a single-photon server with just one atom. They've trapped ultra cold atoms of rubidium in a vacuum chamber and applied laser pulses from one side. The generated photons were of 'high quality,' meaning their energy was very similar from one test to another, and that their properties could be controlled. The researchers think this new way to generate single photons will help the field of quantum information processing. "
Re:Is Roland Piquepaille paid for Slashdot stories (Score:5, Informative)
The Max Planck Society is a public foundation (a wierd legal construction in Germany. In a nutshell: it's a federal agency) and certainly does not have to care about outside sources of funding enough to try publicity stunts (disclaimer: I work at a Max Planck Institute, though a different one than the one linked here. Funding is generous compared to other scientific workplaces and constant over long periods of time. Partly as a consequence, the number of applicants for PhD and PostDoc positions is long enough. There's no need to advertise on
Further, this story has only one single link: To the institutes press release. From what I see, there are no redirects involved, especially not to Mr Piquepaille's blog, and the linked site contains no adverts (which, if otherwise, would be very strange indeed, coming from an MPI).
Last but not least: The research in question was published in Nature (Physics online) last week. That's about as much publicity as you want as a scientist.
So, I see where you're coming from, but I don't think this is an attempt to generate traffic. You also say you don't think stories like this should be published on
NOTE: Number of links *changed* (Score:4, Informative)
Comments on the last Roland story commended him for not including a link back to his blog, which includes ads. As posted, this story doesn't have such a link either, but not because Roland didn't try his hardest.... I'm glad that Slashdot editors redacted his link-whoring.
If you're as tired of these (indirectly) revenue generating pieces as I am, please join me and tag them as "ohnoitsroland" -- I'm doing that to all of his submissions now.
Re:Is Roland Piquepaille paid for Slashdot stories (Score:2, Informative)
That's not quite true [slashdot.org].