What Charles Adams and colleagues at Durham University have now
done is come up with a way of storing individual optical photons
in highly excited states of an atomic gas. Once stored, the
photons can be made to interact strongly, before being released
again. An important feature of the technique is that it uses
microwaves, which are also used to control some types of
stationary qubit. Apparently, this is to be published in PRL.
Definitely a commendable accomplishment here in the evolution of
our capability of using photons for quantum communications.