Harvard Says Optical Computers Practical Using Frozen Light

It's really pretty simple (not!). Just take ultra-cold atoms known as Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs), which can preserve the phase and amplitude of a light pulse. In normal matter, these properties would be smeared out, destroying any information content. If a device can be built that preserves that information, Harvard professor Lene Hau argues, it could be developed into the CPU of an optical computer.