A team of physicists from the University of Glasgow is the first in the world to find a way to use quantum entangled photons.
Holography is commonly used assecurity images printed on credit cards and passports, but beyond that, it has many other practical applications such as data storage, medical imaging and security.
Classical holography creates two-dimensionalimages of three-dimensional objects using a beam of laser light divided into two paths. One beam illuminates the holographic object using reflected light collected by a camera or special holographic film. The trajectory of the second beam, known as the reference beam, is reflected from the mirror directly onto the collection surface without touching the object.
A hologram is created by measuring the differencein the phase of light where two beams meet. Phase is the amount at which the waves of the subject and object beams mix and interfere with each other.
The new quantum holography process alsouses a beam of laser light split in two, but unlike classical holography, the beams are never reunited. Instead, the process uses the unique properties of quantum entanglement to gather the coherence information needed to construct the hologram.
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