Teleportation Using Quantum Physics Has Now Become Reality

In the early 1990s, scientists could only speculate that teleportation using quantum physics could become a reality. Now the process is a standard operation in quantum optics labs worldwide.

It happened last year, actually, when two separate teams made the first ever quantum teleportation outside of a laboratory. Researchers in China have now taken the process several steps further: they managed to teleport a photon from Earth to a satellite orbiting over 500 km (311 miles) away.

Micius, the satellite, is a highly sensitive photo receiver able to detect the quantum states of single photons fired from the ground. Micius was launched to let scientists test several technological building blocks for quantum feats involving entanglement, cryptography, and teleportation.

This teleportation feat was considered as one of the first results of these experiments. The team teleported the first object ever from the ground to orbit, and they also built the first satellite-to-ground quantum network, breaking the record for the longest distance for which entanglement has ever been measured.

According to what the Chinese teams said to MIT Technology Review:

"Long-distance teleportation has been recognised as a fundamental element in protocols such as large-scale quantum networks and distributed quantum computation."

"Previous teleportation experiments between distant locations were limited to a distance on the order of 100 kilometres, due to photon loss in optical fibres or terrestrial free-space channels."

Quantum teleportation depends on quantum entanglement - a situation where a set of quantum objects (e.g., photons) are created at the same instant and point in space.

This shared existence lasts even when the photons are separated from each other – meaning a measurement on one influences the state of the other immediately, despite the distance between them.

This connection can be used to transmit quantum information by "downloading" the information linked to one photon over an entangled connection to another photon. The second photon takes on the identity of the first.

In this particular example, the Chinese team made entangled pairs of photons on the ground at a rate of approximately 4,000 per second. They then transmitted one of these photons to the satellite and kept the other on the ground.

They finally measured the photons on the ground as well as in orbit to confirm that the entanglement was taking place.

It's worth saying that there are several limits to this technology. Transporting anything really big, for example, is a ways off. Theoretically, there's also no maximum transportation distance; however, entanglement is fragile, and it's not difficult for the links to be broken.

Regardless these limits, the research paves the way for more ambitious studies of quantum teleportation.

According to the team:

"This work establishes the first ground-to-satellite up-link for faithful and ultra-long-distance quantum teleportation, an essential step toward global-scale quantum internet."

Reference: Futurism