3,000 atoms entangled with a single photon

MIT Physicists and the Univ. of Belgrade have developed a process where they can entangle 3,000 atoms into a single photon. The claim is that this will allow for more accurate quantum clocks but my conspiracy gears are turning.

Scientists have so far been able to entangle large groups of atoms, although most attempts have only generated entanglement between pairs in a group. Only one team has successfully entangled 100 atoms—the largest mutual entanglement to date, and only a small fraction of the whole atomic ensemble.
Now Vuletic and his colleagues have successfully created a mutual entanglement among 3,000 atoms, virtually all the atoms in the ensemble, using very weak laser light—down to pulses containing a single photon. The weaker the light, the better, Vuletic says, as it is less likely to disrupt the cloud. "The system remains in a relatively clean quantum state," he says.
The researchers first cooled a cloud of atoms, then trapped them in a laser trap, and sent a weak laser pulse through the cloud. They then set up a detector to look for a particular photon within the beam. Vuletic reasoned that if a photon has passed through the atom cloud without event, its polarization, or direction of oscillation, would remain the same. If, however, a photon has interacted with the atoms, its polarization rotates just slightly—a sign that it was affected by quantum "noise" in the ensemble of spinning atoms, with the noise being the difference in the number of atoms spinning clockwise and counterclockwise.

So, what does ATS think? Simple technique for making more accurate clocks or something more sinister?!

phys.org...

a reply to: lostbook

Pardon my ignorance, are atoms not bigger than photons?

AAAh, I remember those days. Rock concerts. I suppose spring break also shows this entanglement

a reply to: lostbook

Suddenly communication technology with quantum entanglement seems much more plausible. It might not be restricted to two-way.

originally posted by: Autorico
a reply to: lostbook

Pardon my ignorance, are atoms not bigger than photons?

A photon can stretch for tens if not hundreds of meters. That's why very long long wave radio receivers such as submarines trail long cables behind them. Microwaves are called that because they are just a few centimeters long. X-rays and Gamma rays are extremely damaging because they pack all that energy into a tiny oscillation just a few nanometers long. That's why they refer to photons as having a "wavelength".

a reply to: stormcell

oh OK. thanks

a reply to: Autorico

I highly doubt "photons" are particles.. But in in any case they can be any size, one would think.. Something is waving.

Does this mean the photon is slowed below the speed of light? Because matter (an atom) cannot attain the speed of light.

a reply to: lostbook

One photon, spread across 3000 atoms, and back out.

Wow. There's some ridiculous QED implications to that.