Chuan-Feng Li

A tiny crystal doped with europium acts like a mailbox for light: it captures pulses and stores them with almost no loss. Efficiency reached 80% for laser flashes and 70% for single photons. The device holds up to 20 light patterns at once, bringing quantum internet closer.

Twisted light beams formed an artificial lattice, like a maze with controllable losses. For the first time, physicists directly observed how the wave's color composition changes in such a system, revealing unexpected mergers of different states. This sheds light on the operation of lasers, sensors,