A Milestone Towards Future Satellite-Based Quantum Teleportation Achieved But Race Still Continues! MessageToEagle.

com - Teleportation experiments represent a crucial step toward f uture quantum networks in space, which require space to ground quantum communica tion. A few months ago, the Chinese physicists achieved a great progress by teleportin g more than 1100 photons over a distance of 97 kilometres in only four hours, bu t the teleportation competition still continues. Their achievement was soon followed by another one, when a team of European scie ntists at the Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information, in Vienna, A ustria, led by physicist, Prof. Dr. Anton Zeilinger transferred the information stored on a stream of photons from two locations separated by 143 kilometers (ab out 93 miles) apart.

Two teams of researchers have extended the reach of quantum teleportation to unp recedented lengths, roughly equivalent to the distance between New York City and Philadelphia. But don t expect teleportation stations to replace airports or train terminals the t eleportation scheme shifts only the quantum state of a single photon. And although part of the transfer happens instantaneously, the steps required to read out the teleported quantum state ensure that no information can be communi cated faster than the speed of light, reports Scientific American (John Matson, an associate editor at Scientific American focusing on space, physics and mathem atics). Quantum teleportation relies on the phenomenon of entanglement, through which qu antum particles share a fragile, invisible link across space. Two entangled photons, for instance, can have correlated, opposite polarization states if one photon is vertically polarized, for instance, the other must be hori zontally polarized. "Experiment was conducted between Alice's transmitter station at the Jacobus Kap teyn Telescope (JKT) of the Isaac Newton Group on La Palma and Bob's receiver st ation at the Optical Ground Station (OGS) of the European Space Agency on Teneri fe, separated by 143 km, both at altitudes of about 2400 m." But, thanks to the intricacies of quantum mechanics, each photon s specific polari zation remains undecided until one of them is measured. At that instant the othe r photon s polarization snaps into its opposing orientation, even if many kilomete rs have come between the entangled pair. An entangled photon pair serves as the intermediary in the standard teleportatio n scheme. Say Alice wants to teleport the quantum state of a photon to Bob. Firs t she takes one member of a pair of entangled photons, and Bob takes the other. Then Alice lets her entangled photon interfere with the photon to be teleported and performs a polarization measurement whose outcome depends on the quantum sta te of both of her particles.

Chinese physicists achieved a great progress by teleporting more than 1100 photo ns over a distance of 97 kilometres in only four hours Because of the link between Alice and Bob forged by entanglement, Bob s photon ins tantly feels the effect of the measurement made by Alice. Bob s photon assumes the quantum state of Alice s original photon, but in a sort of garbled form. Bob cann ot recover the quantum state Alice wanted to teleport until he reverses that gar bling by tweaking his photon in a way that depends on the outcome of Alice s measu rement. So he must await word from Alice about how to complete the teleportation and that word cannot travel faster than the speed of light. That restriction ensures that teleported information obeys the cosmic speed limit. Even though teleportation does not allow superluminal communication, it does pro vide a detour around another physics blockade known as the no-cloning theorem. T hat theorem states that one cannot perfectly copy a quantum object to, for insta nce, send a facsimile to another person. But teleportation does not create a cop y per se it simply shifts the quantum information from one place to another, destr oying the original in the process. Teleportation can also securely transmit quantum information even when Alice doe s not know where Bob is. Bob can take his entangled particle wherever he pleases , and Alice can broadcast her instructions for how to ungarble the teleported st ate over whatever conventional channels radio waves, the Internet she pleases. That information would be useless to an eavesdropper without an entangled link t o Alice. All recent experiments represent a crucial step toward future guantum networks i n space, which require space to ground quantum communication Teleportation, if one day successfully achieved, will be the basis of more-or-le ss perfectly secure communication that can never be hacked, even in principle.