Scientists have created a new way of trapping rubidium atoms in lattice of light, which could help make extremely-fast quantum computers a reality.

Research was published in the journal Nature.

Scientists from Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) created the technique, which allowed researchers to couple a lone atom of rubidium, a metal with a single photon, or light particle, according to Nature.

They believe the technique will also allow them to increase the number of "useful" interactions occurring within a small space, which would increase the amount of quantum computing processing available.

"This is a major advance of this system," said Vladan Vuletic, a professor in MIT's Department of Physics and Research Laboratory for Electronics (RLE), and co-author of the study, according to Nature. "We have demonstrated basically an atom can switch the phase of a photon. And the photon can switch the phase of an atom."

Photons can have two polarization states, the interaction with the atom that changes the photon from one to another, and the interaction with the photon changing the atom's phase.

The atom-photon coupling can serve as a quantum switch to convey information which is equal to a transistor in a classical computing system. 

Researchers may be able to build networks that can process quantum information more effectively by placing many atoms within the same field of light, according to Nature.

"You can now imagine having several atoms placed there, to make several of these devices -- which are only a few hundred nanometres thick, 1,000 times thinner than a human hair, and couple them together to make them exchange information," Vuletic said. 

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