Researchers teleported quantum information over 44 Km with 90% accuracy

It sounds like science fiction but it doesn’t. Some scientists are working on teleportation, not yet for people or products, but to guarantee a highly secure and extremely fast quantum internet. During a test, researchers have been able to teleport high-fidelity quantum information over a distance of 44 Km (27 miles) and when information arrived at the other end, it was received with 90% accuracy. Scientists noted that data fidelity and transfer distance are essential to building a real working quantum Internet.

Then the team achieved greater than 90% fidelity with quantum information sent across the network via an extensive fiber optical network similar to those that form the core of the existing Internet.

The result is a key achievement for building a technology that could redefine global communication. Quantum technology uses qubits, which are unmeasured particles that remain suspended in multiple states. Moreover, multiple qubits can exhibit quantum entanglement which essentially allows these particles to have the same state, no matter how far apart they are. Data in one location instantly reflects the data in another location which sounds like a sort of telepathy.

quantum teleportation diagram

Sending each qubit across 44 kilometers of fiber, set a new limit on how far researchers can send entangled qubits and still successfully use them to teleport quantum information.

While this is the first time researchers have been able to transmit quantum data over such a long distance with accuracy, there are years of work ahead to make a city-sized quantum network possible despite research into quantum teleportation has been conducted for years.

Here’s a list of previous events regarding quantum teleportation:

  • 1993: the first article describing how quantum teleportation works is published;
  • 1997 and 1998: the first experiments on quantum teleportation;
  • 2012: quantum teleportation achieved across a lake in China with a distance of 100 Km and 143 Km between two islands in the Canary Islands;
  • 2017: quantum teleportation between a satellite and the Earth’s surface with a distance of 1203 km.

To better understand the difference between classical information and quantum information, there are 5 famous theorems describing the limits on the manipulation of the latter.

  1. No-teleportation theorem, which states that a qubit cannot be (wholly) converted into classical bits; that is, it cannot be “read”;
  2. No-cloning theorem, which prevents an arbitrary qubit from being copied;
  3. No-deleting theorem, which prevents an arbitrary qubit from being deleted;
  4. No-broadcast theorem, Although a single qubit can be transported from place to place (e.g. via quantum teleportation), it cannot be delivered to multiple recipients;
  5. No-hiding theorem, which demonstrates the conservation of quantum information because if the information is missing from one system then it is simply residing somewhere else in the Universe.

Much is yet to be done, but surely when this technology is ready there will be a complete revolution in broadcasting that is hard to imagine yet.

Source slashgear.com