Press releases
Please quote Nature Physics as the source of these items.
The September 2006 issue of Nature Physics is available online.
September 2006
Quantum teleportation with increased capacity
The successful teleportation of the combined quantum state of two photons is reported in the October issue of Nature Physics. This is the first time this has been achieved for a composite system, and the approach could enable new ways to harness quantum effects for communication and computation purposes.
A quantum-mechanical system is characterized by a set of properties that can exist in certain possible states. For example, one property of a photon is polarization, whose state can be horizontal, vertical or a mixture of the two. Quantum teleportation transfers the state — in this case of the polarization — of one object to another, which can be an arbitrary distance away; teleportation does not transfer energy or matter.
Teleportation of quantum states involving more than one particle, as now shown by Qiang Zhang and colleagues, is required for a number of protocols for large-scale quantum communication and computation. These promise secure information exchange and the ability to solve certain tasks faster than any classical computer. The authors' experiment lasted several days, but with further improvements the scheme might become of more practical value.
Experimental quantumteleportation of a two-qubit composite system
Qiang Zhang, Alexander Goebel, Claudia Wagenknecht, YU-AO Chen, Bo Zhao, Tao Yang, Alois Mair, Jörg Schmiedmayer and Jian-Wei Pan
Published online: 17 September 2006 | doi 10.1038/nphys417