Particles that have linked quantum states, known as 'entangled' particles, can affect each other's states even if they are physically separated. Now scientists have set a record by entangling ten photons — two more than achieved previously.

Entangled particles should one day enable quantum computing and communications, but they are inefficient to produce. A team led by Jian-Wei Pan of the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei created the ten entangled photons by running five photon pairs through a series of four polarizing beam splitters. They also developed a laser light source that produced their photon batches about 100 times faster than did previous tests.

Phys. Rev. Lett. 117, 210502 (2016)