Physicists entangle light with a glass bead, hinting at quantum memory

Researchers suspended and cooled a glass bead with optical tweezers inside an optical cavity and entangled it with a laser light field. It is a rare case of quantum entanglement between light and a macroscopic object, pointing toward quantum memory.

• The bead was held and cooled by lasers inside an optical cavity between mirrors
• Cooling and heating beams correlate through the bead's motion
• Entanglement between light and a macroscopic object usually washes out due to size