# Illinois researchers demonstrate multiphoton memory on a telecom chip platform

_Published Wednesday, October 14, 2026 at 10:18 PM EDT · Science · Latest · Tier 2 — Notable_

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University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign researchers demonstrated a chip that stored up to 20 photons simultaneously for storage times reaching 1.2 microseconds, Tech Times reported. The Nano Letters paper describes quantum memory made from erbium-doped thin-film lithium niobate, a platform compatible with wafer-scale photonics manufacturing.

The device temporarily transfers light's quantum state into erbium atoms and retrieves it later, allowing quantum operations to wait for synchronization. The experiment measured a quantum fidelity lower bound of 96.6%.

Practical deployment faces substantial limits: internal retrieval efficiency fell to 0.7% at one microsecond, and the chip required a temperature of 30 millikelvin and a 1.5-tesla magnetic field. Useful quantum repeaters require retrieval efficiencies in the tens of percent.

## Sources

- [Tech Times](https://www.techtimes.com/articles/329035/20261014/illinois-quantum-memory-chip-stores-20-photons-past-microsecond-commercial-telecom-platform.htm)

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Canonical: https://techandbusiness.org/newswire/XlAsI3rBfv9rkU0QLoPNOg
Published: 2026-10-15T02:18:35.210Z
Story chronology: 2026-10-14T23:16:30.000Z
Retrieved: 2026-10-15T04:35:28.745Z
Publisher: Tech & Business (techandbusiness.org)