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Quantum Leap: Information Teleported between Ions at a Distance

ygolo

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Quantum Leap: Information Teleported between Ions at a Distance: Scientific American

Quantum entanglement, whereby two or more objects are linked by an unseen connection, has some famously spooky effects. As quantum researcher Anton Zeilinger has said, entanglement can be thought of as a pair of dice that always land on the same number.

One of the most intriguing applications of this entanglement is quantum teleportation, in which the quantum state of a particle or atom is transferred to its entangled partner, even if they are separated physically. Such relaying of quantum information could form the backbone of long-distance quantum communication channels, but such a network remains far on the horizon.

A group of researchers, however, report today in Science that they've made headway in quantum teleportation, and thus communication. The team, led by physics graduate student Steven Olmschenk at the University of Maryland, College Park, succeeded in teleporting quantum information between ytterbium ions (charged atoms) three feet (one meter) apart.

Quantum teleportation has been demonstrated over macroscopic distances—hundreds of meters in at least one case—for photons, the fundamental particles of electromagnetic radiation, but ions are better candidates for quantum memory because they can store information for relatively long periods of time. (Christopher Monroe, a study co-author and the leader of the trapped-ion research group to which Olmschenk and several other co-authors belong, wrote about the potential for ions to serve as quantum bits, or qubits, in Scientific American last year.) The fundamental advantage of quantum information systems is that whereas a conventional digital bit can be 0 or 1, a qubit can be in a so-called superposition of 0 and 1 simultaneously.

Information is teleported from one ion to another by encoding quantum information onto the first ion. Once the ion is entangled with another, the state of each ion is indefinite until the first one is measured—an action that projects the other ion into one of two states. Conventional (nonquantum) communication channels relay information, gleaned from the first ion's measurement, as to which of those two states is correct, and a pulse of microwave energy sets the second ion into the state representing the information encoded on the first.

"We write information to the first ion, we perform this teleportation protocol, and it transfers the information over to the second ion," Olmschenk explains. He notes that this is the first teleportation experiment between two matter qubits that were a long distance apart.

Paul Kwiat, a physics professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, says that distant teleportation between potential qubits of quantum memory is a definite milestone. "The whole point of teleportation is getting the information far away," Kwiat says, noting that in prior micron-scale teleportation demonstrations with matter qubits, the researchers might have been better off simply moving the qubits physically from point to point. (A micron is one millionth of a meter, or about one twenty-five-thousandth of an inch.)

The ability to transmit information between bits of quantum memory could form the basis of so-called quantum repeaters, point-to-point networks that relay data down the line. "The idea is to in some sense boost the information along the way—to send it a short distance and then have it in some sense be amplified and sent on again and again to complete a transfer over a long distance," Olmschenk says.

Kwiat also sees this work finding applications in quantum communication as a link between quantum processors. But he would like to see the system boosted to higher operating speeds—in the current incarnation it takes an average of 12 minutes, or about 30 million attempts, to secure entanglement between a pair of ions.

Olmschenk agrees. "If you want to use this for real quantum communication purposes," he says, "we'd like it to go much faster." Toward that end, he says that small improvements in collecting and detecting the photons emitted by the ions, which are used to establish ion-to-ion entanglement, could provide a major boost in teleportation efficiency.

Thoughts?
 

runvardh

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Slowly but surely. What is the apparent velocity, I wonder...
 

Willfrey

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Makes me wish I knew more about subatomic particles and quantum physics.
 

JocktheMotie

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The Elegant Universe-Brian Greene and
In Search of Schrodinger's Cat- John Gribbon

Both very easy to understand, require no mathematical backgrounds, extremely good.


Biggest help from this would be in space exploration.

Right, but you'd have to place one of the entangled particles at your destination. Perfect for shipping between worlds, but won't get you to Vega instantly until you actually trek the 26 or so light years and place it. So still a bit limited. Honestly this is best for telecommunications and computing, I don't think it will work on a macroscopic level.
 

mysterio

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I’ve read elsewhere that photons have been teleported across 6.2 miles. There was also a good article about quantum biology recently in Discover. The quantum realm is indeed a fascinating place, with its Alice in Wonderland properties. The really mind-boggling futuristic changes will occur with the devolpment of quantum computers. I think the first “conscious” AIs will be quantum based.
 

JocktheMotie

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I’ve read elsewhere that photons have been teleported across 6.2 miles. There was also a good article about quantum biology recently in Discover. The quantum realm is indeed a fascinating place, with its Alice in Wonderland properties. The really mind-boggling futuristic changes will occur with the devolpment of quantum computers. I think the first “conscious” AIs will be quantum based.

I read that article, truly awesome and fascinating, from explaining the efficiency of photosynthesis [That we currently can't explain] to explain consciousness. Quantum tunneling is indeed incredible.
 

runvardh

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Right, but you'd have to place one of the entangled particles at your destination. Perfect for shipping between worlds, but won't get you to Vega instantly until you actually trek the 26 or so light years and place it. So still a bit limited. Honestly this is best for telecommunications and computing, I don't think it will work on a macroscopic level.

Ah, I'm not that ambitious. Try communications beween Earth and Mars without the 20 - 40 min lag.
 

Prototype

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Why?
That's pretty heavy!

So, is it because we are getting smart enough to bring these concepts into reality, or can it be that we have become lazier, and more impatient then ever before?
 

Lethal Sage

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I read the article, felt like posting it, but I didn't want my lack of knowledge be known.
 

BlueScreen

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Information never travels faster than c (speed of light). If you think about the consequences on cause and effect then you'll understand why pretty quickly.

Teleportation is pretty cool and interesting though. Quantum entanglement is used mainly to achieve a secure line, so it can't be intercepted and you don't need encryption. Though maybe it can help in some way with noise and reliability of signals over long distances.
 

nightning

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Question:
For this to work, we must be able to manipulate the spin of individual ions at will. Otherwise we wouldn't be able to encode meaningful 0's and 1's. Has anybody ever addressed this issue?
 

JocktheMotie

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Question:
For this to work, we must be able to manipulate the spin of individual ions at will. Otherwise we wouldn't be able to encode meaningful 0's and 1's. Has anybody ever addressed this issue?

When you expose electrons to a field or force it to polarize, that's how you can induce a change in spin. Unfortunately, entanglement can decay at any time, making a calculation or data storage die at point during the action. So until we can get around that, it won't really be feasible. We are still ages away from this.

Information never travels faster than c (speed of light). If you think about the consequences on cause and effect then you'll understand why pretty quickly.

Teleportation is pretty cool and interesting though. Quantum entanglement is used mainly to achieve a secure line, so it can't be intercepted and you don't need encryption. Though maybe it can help in some way with noise and reliability of signals over long distances.

I think you misunderstand what Quantum entanglement entails. This effect does occur instantaneously regardless of distance. It violates locality.
 

Litvyak

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Right now, I'm pretty much into quantum mechanics, it's truly a world of wonders. Something tells me it's going to be much better known to the general public in the next few years.

Information never travels faster than c (speed of light). If you think about the consequences on cause and effect then you'll understand why pretty quickly.

Never say never. I'm not a professional in this territory, but I do think the world is full of surprises. Check this out: 'We have broken speed of light' - Telegraph .
On the topic of cause and effect, consult Hume :jew:
 
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