Researchers from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have established a new record by “teleporting” or transferring quantum data carried in light particles over more than 63 miles (100 kilometers) of optical fibers – four times farther than the previous record.
The scientists teleported packets of light known as photos across the fiber optic cables – a feat in and of itself, according to Engadget, as 99 percent of those photons would be unable to complete the journey. The accomplishment was due to advanced detectors capable of picking up very faint signals from individual light particles, and could lead to improved encryption efforts.
According to Live Science, quantum teleportation has been around since 1998, and involves the capturing of an object’s “quantum states” and the instantaneous transmission of that information from one place to another. At its heart is the unusual nature of quantum physics, which purports that the fundamental building blocks of the universe can exist in two places at the same time.
The findings, which were detailed Tuesday in research published online by the journal Optica, could open the door for the development of a so-called “quantum Internet” which allows users to send messages more securely, lead author Hiroki Takesue and his colleagues explained.
A ‘stepping stone’ to quantum Internet
In a statement, the NIST team said that the experiments confirmed that quantum communication is feasible over long distances, and while other research teams have teleported data over longer distances in free space, pulling this off using garden-variety fiber optic cables provides additional flexibility when it comes to network design.
While most people tend to think of Star Trek when they hear about teleportation, the researchers note that the quantum teleportation process is actually quite different. Their experiments centered around the remote reconstruction of information encoded in quantum states of matter or light and used those quantum states to indicate when in a sequence of time slots a lone photon arrived.
NIST scientists said that the teleportation technique they used was “novel” in that four of their photons were positioned to filter out specific quantum states. Using superconducting nanowires made of molybdenum silicide, the detectors were capable of recording 80 percent of all photons that arrived, determining their arrival time using slots that were each just one nanosecond long.
Using this technique, the researchers could develop devices known as quantum repeaters, which could resend data periodically in order to extend a network’s reach – a stepping stone to quantum Internet. Before now, experts believed that these quantum repeaters would need to rely on atoms or other forms of matter instead of light, which would have slowed transmission speeds.
Due to the experiment’s focus on “a limited combination of quantum states,” the NIST said that teleportation could only be successful in at most one-fourth of transmissions. Because of the new detectors, however, the “desired quantum state” was teleported in “83 percent of the maximum possible successful transmissions.” Overall, their work “exceeded the mathematically significant 66.7 percent threshold for proving the quantum nature of the teleportation process.”
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