Quantum teleportation record broken: Can life imitate Star Trek?
Physicists broke the record for quantum teleportation this week, transferring information from one photon to another across 60 miles of fiber-optic cable.
In their published in Optica, researchers from the (NIST), outline how their newly designed photon detectors allow accurate measurements to be taken even when the light particles emit weak signals.
"We report on quantum teleportation over optical fiber using four high-detection-efficiency superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors (SNSPDs)," the report details. "These SNSPDs make it possible to perform , allowing us to confirm that the quantum states of input photons were successfully teleported."
But how is this even possible?
鈥淲hile most of physics has to follow the same rules 鈥� planets and apples are subject to the same laws of motion 鈥� all of those rules fall away when you get down to the subatomic level,鈥� wrote the 海角大神 Science Monitor鈥檚 Liz Fuller-Wright.
鈥淔or instance, these vanishingly small particles can become 鈥榚ntangled.鈥� When two particles are entangled, then whatever you do to one particle instantaneously affects its entangled twin, regardless of the distance between them,鈥� she said.
This idea of 鈥渆ntanglement鈥� is how the NIST physicists were able to 鈥渢ransfer an unknown quantum state to a remote location,鈥� as detailed by their paper.
Unfortunately, teleporting photons isn't the same as teleporting people, so we won't be barking "Beam me up, Scotty" anytime soon. But this development does have real value.
The science behind quantum teleportation is incredibly technical, but in theory, quantum teleportation can help scientists learn about , effectively a method for making information unhackable.
If two photons could create and share a secret key, then messages could be encrypted using the key and exchanged by conventional means, explains . This would essentially ensure complete security.
鈥淚t goes without saying that plenty of people are very interested in making that happen,鈥� reports the Washington Post. 鈥淏ut first we're going to need quantum teleportation to 鈥� and at longer distances.鈥�
