This is an impression of the interaction between a superconducting electrical circuit and a microwave photon. Credit: Dr. A. Marx, Technische Universitaet Muenchen

Researchers around the world are working on the development of quantum computers that will be vastly superior to present-day computers. Here, the strong coupling of quantum bits with light quanta plays a pivotal role. Professor Rudolf Gross, a physicist at the Technische Universitaet Muenchen, Germany, and his team of researchers have now realized an extremely strong interaction between light and matter that may represent a first step in this direction.