Editor's Summary

28 August 2008

Quantum communication: repeat performance

At distances beyond about 100 km, quantum communication fails due to photon losses in the transmission channel. To overcome this problem, Briegel, Dür, Cirac and Zoller (BDCZ) introduced the concept of quantum repeaters, combining entanglement swapping and quantum memory to efficiently extend the achievable distances. Their implementation has proved challenging due to the difficulty of integrating a quantum memory. Zhen-ShengYuan et al. realize a building block of the BDCZ quantum repeater, demonstrating entanglement swapping with storage and retrieval of light from atomic quantum memories.

Letter: Experimental demonstration of a BDCZ quantum repeater node

Zhen-Sheng Yuan, Yu-Ao Chen, Bo Zhao, Shuai Chen, Jörg Schmiedmayer & Jian-Wei Pan

doi:10.1038/nature07241

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