Fish Eye Lens Could Entangle Atoms

Maxwell’s fish eye lens—proposed more than 150 years ago—is an optical system that bends light along arcs that converge to a single point. New theoretical work investigates how a single photon would pass from one atom to another inside a fish eye lens system. The results show that the photon-mediated interaction between the atoms is independent of their separation distance, implying that a fish eye lens could entangle atoms more efficiently than similar cavity-based devices.