Teleportation Goes Long Distance

20 Aug, 2004 at 10:10pm ET Article published in Tech

Physicists have carried out successful teleportation with particles of light over a distance of 600m across the River Danube in Austria.

Long distance teleportation is crucial if dreams of superfast quantum computing are to be realised. When physicists say “teleportation”, they are describing the transfer of key properties from one particle to another without a physical link. The team has published its findings in the academic journal Nature.

Source: BBC News

Comments

22 Aug 2004 ~ 8:02pm entropy What? I don't get it. What's the need for the fiber optics? If the particles are entangled, one should take the properties of the other no matter what, automatically, supposedly no matter where it is. What in the hell do they need the cable for???
22 Aug 2004 ~ 11:17pm Thrax To send the particles. Quantum communication requires photons, and photons can be sent via fibre optics.
23 Aug 2004 ~ 1:47am entropy What, so they just flung off that single photon into the fiber optics after entangling it?
23 Aug 2004 ~ 2:13am Thrax Yeah. One photon stays at one end, and the other photon goes to the other end. Then you could feasibly remove the link.
23 Aug 2004 ~ 2:57am entropy I guess I'm kind of confused ... I love physics, but I don't know all that much about them. So, they use photons...well...photons are light ... and how the hell do you trap light to study it? Especially a single photon....
23 Aug 2004 ~ 5:53am Thrax Basically, without getting too technical, you fire two lasers at one another. Einstein's theory of lasers distorting space/time turns out to be true. When the lasers impact, you get weirdo concentric rings. Where the rings overlap you have a photon-based quantum pair.
23 Aug 2004 ~ 11:25am entropy Oh, ok, so that explains how they got them entangled, but now how do they study it? You can't trap light to study it, that's why i'm confused. Unless they use instruments to sense a certain, minuscule change? But how could they not lose those two photons when they collide?
23 Aug 2004 ~ 11:37am croc_ ...
23 Aug 2004 ~ 12:32pm bothered The sound of one hand clapping.
23 Aug 2004 ~ 12:44pm RWB Thrax, you scare the hell outta me.