American researchers have put all the data from an image into a single photon, one of the particles that make up light and other electromagnetic phenomena.

The team was also able to retrieve the data, the letters UR for the University of Rochester where lead researcher John Howell is an associate professor of physics.

Researchers at the University of Rochester stored this image in a single photon and then retrieved it.
(University of Rochester)

"It sort of sounds impossible, but instead of storing just ones and zeros, we're storing an entire image," he said in a release Monday.

"While the initial test image consists of only a few hundred pixels, a tremendous amount of information can be stored with the new technique," the researchers said in describing the experiment as an "optics breakthrough."

Alan Willner, professor of electrical engineering at the University of Southern California, endorsed the experiment in the release.

"The parallel amount of information John has sent all at once in an image is enormous in comparison to what anyone else has done before," he said. "It's a wonderful achievement."

The UR was made by sending a single photon through a stencil with U and R etched out. The photon carried the shadow of the UR with it into a cell of cesium gas, where it was slowed and compressed, so many pulses could be held there at the same time.

"Squeezing that much information into so small a space and retrieving it intact opens the door to optical buffering — storing information as light," the team said.

Optical buffering is important because it's seen as one way to speed up computers — by using light to store information — but there are problems converting light signals to electronic signals.

The research appeared in Monday's online issue of the journal Physical Review Letters.