Researchers make milestone discovery in quantum mechanics by FROM PHYSORG.COM

In a paper published in the July 17 issue of the journal Nature, UCSB physicists Max Hofheinz, John Martinis, and Andrew Cleland documented how they used a superconducting electronic circuit known as a Josephson phase qubit, developed in Martinis's lab, to controllably pump microwave photons, one at a time, into a superconducting microwave resonator.

Up to six photons were pumped into and stored in the resonator, and their presence was then detected using the qubit, which acts like an electronic atom, as an analyzer. The photon number states, known as Fock states, have never before been controllably created, said Cleland.