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With colleagues at UC Santa Barbara and Leiden University (Netherlands), Professor Stefan Strauf of the Physics and Engineering Physics department is first author of the article ‘High-frequency single-photon source with polarization control’, the cover article of the December 2007 issue of ‘Nature Photonics’. As described in the News & Views section of that issue, ‘More futuristic applications of single photon states include photonic networks designed to achieve scalable quantum computation, which one day will hopefully solve problems exponentially faster than classical computers’ and ‘[the article] reports on important advances in high-performance single-photon sources that bring such possibilities closer to reality.’ In particular, single photons can be used to implement absolutely secure optical communication also known as Quantum Cryptography.With this new source, recording a single-photon signature which took 8 hours five years back can now be achieved on a millisecond time scale. A one page interview with Professor Strauf was also published in this issue.

Reference: S. Strauf et al., Nature Photonics 1, 704 (2007).