Iron Memory for Single X-Ray Photons
In the future, the develpment of photonic circuit must meet the bottleneck of diffraction limit, i.e., the size of optical photons is too big to allow circuit architecture being tiny. Perhaps, the direct way out is using hard x-ray photon as the information carrier whose wavelength is shorter than the size of single atoms. In Phys. Rev. Lett. 109, 197403 (2012) we propose a scheme toward the first step of coherently controlling it with Mössbauer nucleus 57Fe. The recipe includes coherent storage and phase modulation of π. We further design a very simple two targets interferometer to measure this π phase shift. Let's look forward one day the Mössbauer quantum memory might come true and sell in shops. [please also see its media coverage Physics 5, 125 (2012) and MPIK press (in German).]
