In a complicated setup that
involved pairs of photons and hundreds of very accurate measurements, the team showed that the wave function must be real: not enough information could be gained about the polarisation of the photons to imply they were in particular states before measurement.
Scientists already knew that
photons can lose or gain energy via vibrations, but the similarity with Cooper
pairs is a new and interesting way
of thinking about the effect, says physicist Ian Walmsley
of Oxford University, who was not
involved with the research.