Quantum information teleportation record smashed

He said, “Only about 1 percent of photons make it all the way through 100 km of fiber”.

Quantum teleportation isn’t quite the matter-shifting technique of Star Trek, but instead the process of transferring – in fact scientists say “remotely reconstructing” – information that’s held in the quantum state of one chunk of matter or light to another, some distance away.

“These SNSPDs make it possible to perform highly efficient multifold photon measurements, allowing us to confirm that the quantum states of input photons were successfully teleported over 100 km of fiber with an average fidelity of 83.7±2.0%”.

To break the distance record, the NIST had to use a very sensitive detector, one that could detect single photons. These two beams are randomly either in-phase or out of phase – this is the data you’re trying to teleport.

Specifically, the teleportation relies on the phenomenon thought by many to be quite odd called quantum entanglement, where subatomic particles are linked and influence one another instantaneously, without regard to the distance apart they are. The laboratory first used atoms in their experiments, but photons are faster and more easily to manipulate. The state in question was the position a photon had in a series of time slots just one nanosecond long.

As Stevens puts it, “we never could have done this experiment without these new detectors, which can measure this incredibly weak signal”. In comparison, the previous record-holder had detectors that operated with about 75 percent efficiency at best.

The feat was made possible with the deployment of newly designed photon detectors on the far end of the fiber.

“However, the experiment at the Canary Islands involved a telescope on top of one mountain and a telescope on top of another mountain, with the telescopes pointed at each other at night, since background light during the day would interfere with the experiment”, Stevens said.

It may sound like a logical step to send quantum information down fiber optic cable-after all, it’s how much of the world’s data is now sent.

According to Live Science, scientists have been doing experiment with quantum teleportation since 1998, and the study results might be used for developing more secure Internet connections. The latest study, published in the journal Optica, details how optical fibre could be used to create a quantum internet.