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1.

GENERAL INTRODUCTION
1.1. INTRODUCTION
Since the invention of wheel, human race has always tried to develop more and more. Humans have modified their own findings to get better and much better results. Whether for communication or transportation, we have developed several techniques to get the output as fast as possible and trying to make it even faster and advanced. And now this race with time has taken such a form that we dont want anything to leave us behind, even though its light. For communication purpose there are telephones, cellular phones, internet and many more techniques. Similarly for transportation there are road vehicles, trains, ships, aircrafts and many more ways. But the problem being faced is that these are the classical methods which are very much prone to hindrance offered by the medium and thus these techniques are medium dependent. Their medium dependency makes it essential to develop more and more efficient systems so that the travel time could be reduced with a proper, reliable output. Thus a new technique has been suggested as Teleportation. The term Teleportation or Teletransportation, is a method of transportation through the means of telecommunication. At first sight it seems to be a scene from any science fiction movie that anything traveling with the speed of light (since in reality its not possible as it will violate Special Theory of Relativity) or even faster. But different methods are being developed to make it happen in real world. Transporting objects or it will be better to say Teleporting objects, from one place to another with the speed of light or at superluminal speed is almost going to be possible with the help of quantum mechanical tools and their implementation. Disappearance of anything from any location and its reappearance at another location at the same instant without actually travelling through the medium is what exactly being done in teleportation. In this paper a discussion about teleportation, more specifically Quantum Teleportation has been done. In What is Teleportation? discussion about Classical and Quantum Teleportation methods and there comparison is done. Quantum Teleportation (QT) Technology contains detailed discussion on Quantum Teleportation, Entanglement and Mathematical approach to the concept of quantum teleportation. QT Experiments and Applications include information about
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the recent experiments performed in the field of quantum teleportation, different applications of quantum teleportation, discussion about whether superluminal teleportation and human teleportation is possible or not.

2. WHAT IS TELEPORTATION?
2.1. TELEPORTATION
Teleportation is a term that refers to a number of theories and notions concerning the transfer of matter from one point to another without traversing the physical space between them, similar to the concept apport, an earlier word used in the context of spiritualism. The term Teleportation in physics simply implements the properties of Telecommunications and Transportation to obtain a new technology for transportation. In this method an object from senders location is transferred to the destination and the original object at senders place gets destroyed so that it satisfies that only the original object exists. It is quite similar to the usual method of sending documents through FAX. But the difference is that, in teleportation any object can be transferred to the desired location and instead of getting a replica of the original object one receives the object itself. 2.1.1. History of Teleportation The word Teleportation was coined in 1931 by American writer Charles Fort to describe the strange disappearances and appearances of anomalies, which he suggested may be connected. He joined the Greek prefix tele- (meaning "distant") to the Latin verb portare (meaning "to carry"). Fort's first formal use of the word was in the second chapter of his 1931 book, Lo!: "Mostly in this book I shall specialize upon indications that there exists a transportory force that I shall call Teleportation." Fort added "I shall be accused of having assembled lies, yarns, hoaxes, and superstitions. To some degree I think so myself. To some degree, I do not. I offer the data."[3] Fort suggested that teleportation might explain various allegedly paranormal phenomena, although it is difficult to say whether Fort took his own "theory" seriously or instead used it to
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point out what he saw as the inadequacy of mainstream science to account for strange phenomena. The word teletransportation, which simply expands Charles Fort's abbreviated term, was first employed by Derek Parfit as part of a thought exercise on identity.

2.1.2. Is it possible to have Classical Teleportation? Classically we can think of a system where we need to transport an object from one place to another. This problem can be solved using any mode of transportation such as road vehicle or ship or an aircraft, depending on the distance of destination and time required. But this cannot be termed as teleportation because teleportation is a method where the object is reconstructed at the receiving end and the original object at the sending end is destroyed. Now let us consider a fax machine, a giant 3-D fax machine, to fax the object to destination. Into the fax machine at sending end we put the object and out of the fax machine at receiving end we get a copy of the object. The first objection that arises is that we now have two copies of the object, which may not be ideal. But this problem can be fixed easily. We get a shredder and attach it to the fax machine at sending end so that it destroys the originals after the object had passed through the fax. So there is only one copy of the object at the receiving end. A second objection is that only an approximate copy of original object is obtained at the receiving end. Certainly a standard fax machine has a fairly poor resolution; however there is no reason why very accurate fax machines cannot be built. Now it is true that the copy at receiving end will never be perfect. But even if we used any other transportation mode the object that arrives would be slightly different from the one that was sent. Along the way it will be shaken a bit or it might get hit by some cosmic rays which will change the state of a few atoms. Our goal should be that the errors that appear when we teleport the object via the fax machine should be comparable to the changes that would have occurred when moving the object via any other transportation mode. That is, a few, very very small errors should be acceptable.

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An important thing to notice is that the giant fax machine that is considered is not intended to transfer matter and energy, just like a regular fax machine would not be used to transmit blank papers. We always assume that we have the appropriate matter and energy available at the receiving end and our goal is simply to assemble it into the pattern of the original object placed at the sending end. But the main problem remains the same that whether classical teleportation is possible or not? The answer appears to be NO because, the object needs to reappear at the receiving end the instant it gets disappeared from the sending end, which is impossible classically.

Fig.1. Classical facsimile Transmission

2.1.3. Quantum Mechanical treatment for Teleportation As we considered a giant-3D fax machine to teleport an object, can we similarly think of any such fax machine to teleport the objects in real world which is actually quantum mechanical? The answer again seems to be NO because, what a fax machine does is; Step 1. - It fully measures the state of the input (scans the object). Step 2. - Then it transmits the results via the phone.
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Step 3. - And at the receiving end it reconstructs the original from the received description. Step 1 as we all know is already impossible because of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. We could measure the position of all the particles forming the object but then we wouldn't get a chance to measure the momentum of those particles. Alternatively, we could measure the momentum but then not the position. One can also envision a mixed strategy where we measure some positions and some momenta, however the uncertainty principle basically guarantees that we will never obtain enough information to rebuild even a modestly good copy of the original object. It appears that even before running the object through the shredder; the measurement process will likely destroy the only good copy without obtaining the required information to rebuild it anew. But what really surprises is that even though the "measure and reconstruct" procedure does not work, there is an alternative procedure that effectively realizes teleportation in the quantum world. After the publication of a 1993 paper by Charles H. Bennett et al., quantum teleportation seemed to be possible and is only very hard but not impossible. A new process termed as Entanglement here comes into effect. Because of Heisenbergs Uncertainty Principle the quantum teleportation which seemed to be impossible is now possible by using entanglement of particles. Roughly speaking an entangled state is a pair of objects that are correlated in a quantum way. Since we dont have any such communication tool which allows quantum information to be transferred we are bound to use our classical tools only, otherwise the quantum teleportation process would have been comparatively much easier. To use our standard classical communication tools for transmitting the state of a quantum system we need to use entangled quantum state of particles which will be destroyed by the teleportation procedure. To prepare an entangled state of two particles, one essentially has to start with both particles at the same place, lets say A. Now we have the problem of sending one of the entangled particles to the destination, lets say B. This entangled particle at B is then converted into the original
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particle at A by implementing proper operations on the two particles. In the process of measuring the state of particle at A it is destroyed and with the information obtained B is converted into the original particle at A. Thus teleportation is achieved. However, teleporting to say a distant planet or to some other place we have never had contact with is impossible.

3. QUANTUM TELEPORTATION (QT) TECHNOLOGY


3.1. QUANTUM TELEPORTATION
3.1.1. History of Quantum Teleportation In 1993, a paper published by Bennett, Brassard, Crepeau, Jozsa, Peres and Wootters enlightened path for the possibility of quantum teleportation. That is some 70 years after the formulation of the theory of quantum mechanics! Their solution was based on a theorem of quantum mechanics dating to the 1930s called the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) effect. It states that when two particles come into contact with one another, they can become "entangled". This revelation, first announced by Charles H. Bennett at an annual meeting of the American Physical Society in March 1993, was followed by a report on his findings in the March 29, 1993 issue of Physical Review Letters. Since that time, experiments using photons have proven that quantum teleportation is in fact possible. In 1998, physicists at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), along with two European groups, turned the IBM ideas into reality by successfully teleporting a photon, a particle of energy that carries light. The Caltech group was able to read the atomic structure of a photon, send this information across 3.28 feet (about 1 meter) of coaxial cable and create a replica of the photon. As predicted, the original photon no longer existed once the replica was made. In subsequent years, other scientists have demonstrated teleportation experimentally in a variety of systems, including single photons, coherent light fields, nuclear spins, and trapped ions.

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3.1.2. Steps involved in Quantum Teleportion The general idea behind the process of teleportation seems to be that the original object is scanned in such a way as to extract all the information from it, then this information is transmitted to the receiving location and used to construct the replica, not necessarily from the actual material of the original, but perhaps from atoms of the same kinds, arranged in exactly the same pattern as the original. But as Heisenbergs uncertainty principle says, we cannot measure all the properties of a particle simultaneously. In fact we cannot do any measurement directly on a particle as it will destroy the state of that particle and thus the particle will be changed. So, a pair of entangled particles is prepared (B and C in Fig.2.) so that any measurement done on the state of one particle affects the other as well. One of these entangled particles (particle C) is send to the destination and the other one (particle B) is kept at the sending station.

Fig.2. Quantum Teleportation

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The original particle (A in Fig.2.) and the entangled particle B is operated at the sending station and combined measurement is done on the two particles. The information about the state of particle A thus obtained is sent to the receiving station through classical modes (usually data has been sent through optical fibers, in the experiments performed till date). Using this information proper unitary operation is performed on particle C to obtain the original state of particle A. The unitary operations performed are X, Z and Controlled X (C-X), depending on the information about state of particle A. How these operations are performed is discussed in the next the section Mathematics involved in Quantum Teleportation.

3.2.

ENTANGLEMENT

It solves the difficulty of measuring that we encountered in Heisenberg Uncertainty principle. Two particles are said to be entangled when they come in contact. Measurement of one of the entangled sub-system puts the other sub-system in the corresponding state. 3.2.1. What is Entanglement? Entanglement is a term used in quantum theory to describe the way that particles of energy/matter can become correlated to predictably interact with each other regardless of how far apart they are. Particles, such as photons, electrons, or qubits that have interacted with each other retain a type of connection and can be entangled with each other in pairs, in the process known as correlation. Knowing the spin state of one entangled particle, whether the direction of the spin is up or down, allows one to know that the spin of its mate is in the opposite direction. Even more amazing is the knowledge that, due to the phenomenon of superposition, the measured particle has no single spin direction before being measured, but is simultaneously in both a spin-up and spin-down state. The spin state of the particle being measured is decided at the time of measurement and communicated to the correlated particle, which simultaneously assumes the opposite spin direction to that of the measured particle.

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3.2.2. Principle Two photons E1, K and beam splitters are required. We direct one of the entangled photons, say E1, to the beam splitter. Meanwhile, we prepare another photon with a polarization of 45 degree, and direct it to the same beam splitter from the other side, as shown. This is the photon whose properties will be transported; we label it K. We time it so both E1 and K reach the beam splitter at the same time. that

Fig.3. Incidence of two photons on a beam splitter The E1 photon incident from above will be reflected by the beam splitter some of the time and will be transmitted some of the time. Similarly for the K photon that is incident from below. So sometimes both photons will end up going up and to the right as shown. Similarly, sometimes both photons will end up going down and to the right.

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Fig.4.Diagram shows the possibilities of reflection or refraction However, in the case of one photon going upwards and the other going downwards, we cannot tell which is which. Perhaps both photons were reflected by the beam splitter, but perhaps both were transmitted. This means that the two photons have become entangled.

Fig.5. Diagram shows the two entangled photons

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3.2.3. How Entanglement is performed?? In entanglement, at least three photons are needed to achieve quantum teleportation:

Photon A: The photon to be teleported Photon B: The transporting photon Photon C: The photon that is entangled with photon B

If researchers tried to look too closely at photon A without entanglement, they would bump it, and thereby change it. By entangling photons B and C, researchers can extract some information about photon A, and the remaining information would be passed on to B by way of entanglement, and then on to photon C. When researchers apply the information from photon A to photon C, they can create an exact replica of photon A. However, photon A no longer exists as it did before the information was sent to photon C. Quantum entanglement allows qubits that are separated by incredible distances to interact with each other immediately, in a communication that is not limited to the speed of light. No matter how great the distance between the correlated particles, they will remain entangled as long as they are isolated. Entanglement is a real phenomenon (Einstein called it "spooky action at a distance"), which has been demonstrated repeatedly through experimentation. Much current research is focusing on how to harness the potential of entanglement in developing systems for quantum cryptography, quantum computing and teleportation.

3.3. MATHEMATICS INVOLVED IN QUANTUM TELEPORTATION


3.3.1. The Mathematics of One Quantum Spin As in a chemistry course we all have learnt that electrons have spins that can be either up or down. What this means is that there exists a device called a Stern-Gerlach machine which measures the vertical angular momentum with which an electron is spinning. It turns out that the result of the measurement is always either +1/2 or -1/2 in a particular set of units. We call the
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first case spin up and the second spin down. Or simply we can say that there exists a device that sorts electrons into two categories: spin up and spin down. To describe that state of an object that is quantum mechanical, such as spin, physicists use the symbols called Kets. | The important part of the above expression is the , which can be any symbol that represents a state. The bar on the left and the greater than sign on the right have no significance beyond stating that is a quantum state.

The two states of a spin, up and down, correspond to two different kets which are written | and | respectively. However, the rules of quantum mechanics imply that a spin can also be in a state that is a sum (often called superposition) of the spin up and spin down states. The most general state for a spin has the form a| +b| where a and b are complex numbers. What happens if a spin in the above state is put into a Stern-Gerlach machine? With probability | | we will obtain outcome +1/2 (that is, spin up) and with probability | | we will obtain outcome -1/2 (or spin down). The probabilities must sum to one and we have the constraint | | | | . The above procedure of determining whether the spin is up or down is known

as a measurement in the vertical direction, and also known as a measurement in the z basis. It is also possible to measure the spin along the horizontal direction (also known as the x basis) using a modified Stern-Gerlach machine. This will sort spins into two different groups known as spin right or spin +1/2 in the x direction, and spin left or spin -1/2 in the x direction. Spins in these states are denoted respectively by | and | . These new vectors are related to spin up and spin down states by the following equations; | | And so a state
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| |

| , | ,

| (

)|

| ) (

| )

) | ,

when measured in the x basis, has a probability | state and a probability |

| of being seen in the +1/2 or spin-right

| of being seen in the -1/2 or spin-left state.

In particular, if we started with the spin-up state (a = 1 and b = 0) or the spin down state (a = 0 and b = 1), then there is an equal chance of observing left or right. This is the uncertainty principle for spins. After any measurement the state of the spin is changed to the outcome of the measurement. That is, if we measure in the x basis and observe the outcome -1/2, then the state of the spin will become | irrespective of what the state of the spin was before the measurement. There are other measurements that can be done on a spin. In particular, it can be measured along any axis. Each of these measurements may give us some information about the coefficients a and b, but never full knowledge. And since the state is effectively destroyed after the first measurement, it is impossible to ever determine the numbers a and b given only a single copy of the state. This is what we mean by the statement that we can't measure a spin and then use the results to reconstruct a new spin with the same state. Our goal below will be to describe the teleportation of the spin of a single electron. That is, we shall place a single electron in Box A and a single electron in Box B. The goal is to make sure that the spin of the electron in Box B after teleportation is equal to the spin of the electron in Box A before teleportation. We won't care if the momentum and position (relative to the box) of the electrons are the same. We shall call this the teleportation of a spin. It may seem like this is a much weaker goal than teleporting the full state (i.e., its position, momentum and spin) of an electron. However the techniques described below can be extended to teleport positions and momenta as well. Furthermore, it turns out that the spin is already a fairly interesting quantum mechanical object. A spin is equivalent to one qubit, which is the quantum generalization of a bit.
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3.3.2. The Mathematics of Two Quantum Spins When we have two spins, each of them can be individually in the up or down state, leading to the four states | these states; a| +b| +c| +d| | | and | . The most general two-spin state is a superposition of

The coefficients have a similar interpretation as before. If both spins are measured in the vertical or z basis, then | | is the probability of obtaining two up outcomes, | | is the probability of obtaining up for the first spin and down for the second spin, and so on. Clearly we need | | | | | | | | .

What happens if we just measure the first spin? By consistency we should see the up outcome with probability | | | | and the down outcome with probability | | | | . After the

measurement, the state of the two spins becomes; | | if the up outcome was obtained, and | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |

if the down outcome was obtained. Basically, if we measure the first spin as being up, we remove all terms in the sum where the first spin is down, and then we multiply all the remaining coefficients by some number that makes their magnitude squared sum to one. A second important fact about two spin states is that they are distributive in the following sense: If we know that for one spin | first spin to obtain equations such as; | | | | | |

| , then the equality can be applied to the

and similarly it can be applied to the second spin to obtain; | | |

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3.3.3. The Singlet State Now it is time to introduce one of the most important two-spin states: the Singlet State, defined by; has the following important properties; If either spin is measured along any axis, the outcome will always yield +1/2 with 50% probability and -1/2 with 50% probability. If we measure one spin along any axis and then measure the other spin along the same axis the results will always be anticorrelated (that is, one spin will yield outcome +1/2 and the other spin will yield -1/2). That the above is true for measurements along the z axis should be obvious given the rules of measurement we defined above. Checking that this is also true for measurements along the x axis is a good exercise. The first rule basically states that we have no information about the measurement outcome of a single spin. However, the second rule essentially states that as soon as we measure one spin, we know the state of the second spin: it is a spin in a direction opposite to the first. At first these entangled states may seem very mysterious, but something very similar can be constructed in the classical world. Ask a friend to draw either an up arrow or a down arrow on a piece of paper without telling you which he chose, and then make a copy of the paper without looking at it. Now in principle we have a very similar situation, you don't know what is drawn on either sheet of paper but as soon as you see one you know exactly what is on the other one. The fact that in the quantum case the spins are always opposite is not a significant difference either: just rotate one of the papers after the photocopying step. | |

The singlet state is an entangled state that in some sense is as entangled as two spins can get. It

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What is truly special about the entangled state is that in the quantum world there are many ways of measuring a spin, as opposed to just one way of looking at a sheet of paper, and for each possible measurement of the spins there is an anticorrelation of the results. 3.3.4. Unitary Operations Thus far all we have ever done with quantum systems is measure them. These measurements give us some information about the state but also have the consequence of destroying the remaining information. There is another class of operations that reveal nothing about the quantum state and hence do not destroy any of the hidden quantum information". These operations are called unitary operations. The simplest example of a unitary operation is a rotation. Say a rotation around the x axis by 180 degrees. This will change an spin up into a spin down but will leave a right-spin invariant The operation that rotates a spin by 180 degrees around the x axis is important enough that it is often just called the X operation or the X gate. When acting on a general state | operation will transform it into the state | X( | | . We write this as; | ) = | | | the X

The fact that it does not destroy any quantum information follows from the fact that it can be undone, mainly by performing another rotation by 180 degrees around the x axis. Another very important operation is a rotation by 180 degrees around the z axis, which exchanges the left and right spin states. The operation is called the Z operation or Z gate and acts on general states as; X( | | ) | | That is, it applies a minus sign to the | state. This may seem a little strange, unfortunately we will have to defer a discussion of this minus sign to some other time (If we examine the X gate closely we will see that it applies a similar minus sign to the | state). There is one final operation which will be required for quantum teleportation. We call it the Controlled-X and sometimes abbreviated it as C-X. It acts on two spins at a time as follows; ( | | | | )
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that is, if the first spin is down it flips the second spin but if the first spin is up then it leaves the second spin invariant. It seems easy to do the above operation if we measure the first spin in the z basis, and then do the required operation based on the result of the measurement. It turn out that this operation can also be done without any measurements (and hence without destroying any of the quantum information) so long as both spins are in the same laboratory. In fact, all three of the above operations X, Z and C-X can be done in practice in a laboratory, and we shall use them as the building blocks for our teleportation scheme. 3.3.5. The setup for Quantum Teleportation Now we are finally ready to return to the problem of teleportation. The setup for the teleportation experiment is as follows: We start with a spin in an unknown state | | , which we are trying to teleport. By unknown state we simply mean that we don't know what are the values of the coefficients a and b. This spin begins in Lab A We also start with an entangled singlet state" with state

. This state consists

of two spins the first of which is in Lab A and the second is in Lab B. The state of all three spins can be written as; | | | |

That is, in quantum mechanics the amplitudes multiply. If the first spin had a coefficient a for the | state and the second and third spins had a coefficient for the | combined state will have a coefficient of for the state | be obtained by similar arguments. Recapping, we start with three spins; Spin 1 is the unknown spin that we are trying to teleport and is located in Lab A. Spin 2 is the first spin of the entangled pair and is located in Lab A. Spin 3 is the second spin of the entangled pair and is located in Lab B.
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state, then their

. The other coefficients can

At the end of the teleportation procedure spin 3 will have the state |

| . We still won't

know the value of the coefficients a and b, but the state of spin 1, which was in Lab A will have been moved to spin 3, which is in Lab B. 3.3.6. A recipe for Quantum Teleportation Teleportation is accomplished by the following five steps: Step 1: Apply the C-X operation to spins 1 and 2. Step 2: Measure spin 2 in the z basis. Step 3: Measure spin 1 in the x basis. Step 4: Lab A calls Lab B and informs them of the outcome of the two measurements. Step 5: In Lab B they do the following: - If the measurement outcomes were for spin 2 and - If the measurement outcomes were 3. - If the measurement outcomes were 3. - If the measurement outcomes were 3 and then apply the X gate to spin 3. The first three operations can all be done in Lab A with no help from Lab B. We are allowed to do the C-X operation because both spins 1 and 2 are in Lab A. The last step can be completed entirely in Lab B, once the results of the measurements are known. 3.3.7. Proof of Teleportation Starting from | | | | for spin 2 and for spin 1: Apply the Z gate to spin for spin 2 and for spin 1: Apply the X gate to spin for spin 2 and for spin 1: Do nothing. for spin 1: Apply the Z gate to spin

we apply the C-X operation from Step 1, which produces the state | | | |

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Now we measure spin 2 in the z basis. The probability of getting spin up is | |

| |

(| |

| | )

and the probability of getting spin down is exactly the same. That is,

there is a 50% chance that we will see either outcome. Let's assume that we got the outcome spin up outcome for spin 2 (the other case is similar). The state will now be; | |

The are absent because after a measurement we always multiply the state by the number that makes the magnitude squared of the coefficients sum to one. In this case, that number exactly cancels the factors. Lets rewrite the first spin in terms of the | and | states as follows; | | ( | | ) ( | | )

Now we can do Step 3, where we measure the first spin in the x basis. Again we obtain the spin right outcome with probability | |

| |

(| |

| | )

and similarly for the

spin left outcome. Let's assume we got the spin right outcome for spin 1 (again the other case is similar), and therefore the state becomes; | | where again the factors of disappear as before. In step 4 Lab A communicates the results to Lab B. Finally, in Step 5 Lab B must perform the X gate to spin 3, which changes the state into; | the state for the spin in Lab B is | | . | , whereas This is our goal. The expression says that the state for the two spins in Lab A is |

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4. QT EXPERIMENTS AND APPLICATIONS


4.1. RECENT EXPERIMENTS IN QUANTUM TELEPORTATION
4.1.1. Transfer of polarization state from one photon to another The first laboratory implementation of QT was carried out in 1997 at the University of Innsbruck by a team led by Anton Zeilinger. It involved the successful transfer of a polarization state from one photon to another. A type-II degenerate, pulsed parametric downconversion process was used to generate the polarization-entangled EPR source. The experimental design is relatively easy to implement. The drawback is that only one of the four EPR-Bell states can be distinguished. In 1998, the Zeilinger team demonstrated that freely propagating particles that never physically interacted with one another could also readily be entangled. In this experiment, one photon each from two pairs of polarization-entangled photons were subjected to Bell-state measurement. As a result, the other two photons were projected into an entangled state. This result is remarkable, since it shows that quantum entanglement does not require entangled particles to originate from a common source or to have interacted in the past. 4.1.2. Teleportation of spin of atom In 2004 physicists in Austria and US independently demonstrated quantum teleportation with atoms for the first time. Until then, teleportation had only ever been observed with photons. The results could represent a major step towards building a large-scale quantum computer. David Wineland and colleagues from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in Colorado began by creating a superposition of spin up and spin down states in a single trapped beryllium ion (Nature 429 737). Using laser beams, they teleported these quantum states to a second ion with the help of a third, auxiliary ion. The NIST technique relied on being able to move the ions within the trap. Meanwhile, Rainer Blatt and co-workers at the University of Innsbruck performed a similar experiment using trapped calcium ions (Nature 429 734). However, rather than moving the ions, they "hide" them in a different internal state.

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The success of a teleportation experiment is judged by its fidelity value -- a figure of merit that shows how faithfully the quantum state of the first system has been reproduced in the second system. Both the Innsbruck and NIST groups achieved fidelity values of around 75%. By comparison, approaches that do not use entanglement cannot achieve fidelity values above 66.6%. 4.1.3. Teleportation of energy Masahiro Hotta at Tohoku University in Japan has come up with a much more exotic idea. Why not use the same quantum principles to teleport energy? Today, building on a number of papers published in the last year, Hotta outlines his idea and its implications. The process of teleportation involves making a measurement on each one an entangled pair of particles. He points out that the measurement on the first particle injects quantum energy into the system. He then shows that by carefully choosing the measurement to do on the second particle, it is possible to extract the original energy. All this is possible because there are always quantum fluctuations in the energy of any particle. The teleportation process allows injecting quantum energy at one point in the universe and then exploiting quantum energy fluctuations to extract it from another point. Of course, the energy of the system as whole is unchanged. He gives the example of a string of entangled ions oscillating back and forth in an electric field trap, a bit like Newton's balls. Measuring the state of the first ion injects energy into the system in the form of a phonon, a quantum of oscillation. According to Hotta performing the right kind of measurement on the last ion extracts this energy. Since this can be done at the speed of light (in principle), the phonon doesn't travel across the intermediate ions so there is no heating of these ions. The energy has been transmitted without traveling across the intervening space. That's teleportation.

4.2. APPLICATIONS OF QUANTUM TELEPORTATION


Quantum Teleportation has vast applications if successfully implemented.

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Its the main principle behind working of quantum computers. Quantum computers will be used for manipulation of quantum information. Quantum computers will consume negligible amount of energy as compared to computers currently being used. This will help to save a significant amount of electrical power for other purposes.

Implementation of quantum teleportation in quantum computers will also increase the capacity of memory and reduce its size to a great extent as it will work at atomic level for data storage in memory (Qubits or the quantum bits will be the smallest data unit).

Quantum teleportation used for communication purpose will be absolutely secure and safe with respect to leakage of information which is easily possible in classical communication methods.

Quantum Cryptography is another field emerging due to quantum teleportation which will be the same as general cryptography for encryption decryption of information. But the encrypted data will be essentially unbreakable and so it will be ultra secure.

Speed for transfer of data will be enhanced to a great extent with the use of quantum teleportation. A group of scientists have also proposed the use of quantum teleportation to the problem of deep space propulsion. According to them its not only possible but, if implemented successfully, it would revolutionize space travel, even to the point of making interstellar travel (both manned and unmanned) truly feasible for the first time. This scheme for propulsion is suggested by the use of ion drives (a form of rocket propulsion system which uses a stream of charged particles, or ions, as a rocket exhaust). Ion drives typically yield far lower thrust-to-weight ratios than traditional chemical rockets, but because of their much slower fuel burn rate they can gradually accelerate a spacecraft to speeds that no chemical rocket can reach. Ion propulsion was used on NASAs highly successful Deep Space1 probe, in the form of a solar-electric drive.

Another interesting application suggested by scientists from NASA and the U.S. Department of Energy is the wireless power transmission. They have studied various concepts for generating electric power in space and then quantum teleporting it (via microwave in most design concepts) to the earths surface for public use.

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4.3. SUPERLUMINAL COMMUNICATION


Teleportation as defined here requires sending a message from one location (say A) to another (say B) using a regular phone. The message will travel at the speed of light from A to B. Therefore, our version of teleportation cannot be instantaneous and does not allow for travel faster than the speed of light. In fact, teleportation might be significantly slower than light travel if the measurement and reconstruction procedures are slow. However, if we are teleporting a person (or some other system that is not static) then the measurement and reconstruction procedures need to be performed nearly instantaneously. After all, if one get to see as ones feet are slowly measured and disassembled, the process would likely not be pain-free. At first glance, though, there seems to be a way to use the teleportation procedure for superluminal communication. That is, by measuring the spins at A, we are somehow instantaneously modifying the spin at B. Whether or not this is a good description of what is going on depends which interpretation of quantum mechanics is used to describe the system (there are actually many interpretations of quantum mechanics which describe the above process in very different ways). However, all interpretations of quantum mechanics agree on one fact: that such trick cannot be used for superluminal communication. The basic idea of such a proof is to check that, when averaged over all the outcomes obtained at A, any measurement done at B will always yield 50-50 outcomes, no matter what state is being teleported. Therefore the measurements at B cannot convey any useful information, at least until such a time when the correction operators have been applied. Unfortunately all modern theories of physics predict that both faster than light travel and faster than light communication are impossible.

4.4. HUMAN TELEPORTATION


There are some 1029 matter particles comprising a human, each of which has position and momentum degrees of freedom in addition to spin. In principle, we might also need to teleport
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the photons, gluons and other energy particles comprising a person. Teleporting all that is going to be significantly harder than a few thousand spins. It is probably a good guess that teleportation of humans will never be possible. Are we at least sure that it is possible to teleport humans in principle? While most scientists expect that ten, hundreds and maybe even thousands of spins will be teleported in practice some day, the teleportation of a human being, even in principle, is actually still a controversial subject. A group of physicists argue that there is a soul, consciousness or spirit that permeates the human body that cannot be described by science. Unfortunately, in this view by definition we are prevented from using science to determine if teleportation is feasible. A second group of physicists would disagree with human teleportation because of something known as the measurement problem. Roughly speaking, any object that is capable of performing quantum measurements cannot itself be a quantum object, and therefore cannot be teleported using quantum teleportation. In this view, small numbers of particles are quantum but at some point when you combine enough particles you end up with a classical or observer object, which cannot be described by the laws of quantum mechanics. In principle, such a belief will have experimental consequences, as we should be able to determine at what point objects stop being quantum mechanical. At the moment there is neither any experimental evidence for such observer objects nor even a consistent theory that could describe them. On the other hand, it is also true that presently it is very hard to experimentally study large quantum systems, and so it is quite possible that something interesting will happen when a large enough system is examined. Another group would say that all objects big and small are quantum mechanical, and therefore in principle can be teleported. About the measurement problem they argue that measurements never actually occur. What happens is that the observer becomes entangled with the system he is measuring, and this appears to the observer as if a measurement was performed. The mathematics for this process works out quite nicely, but it does leave the nagging question of why does it feel like we are constantly measuring the world?
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Of course, the final answer to whether teleportation of people is possible even in principle must wait for the formulation of a complete theory of physics, one which unifies relativity with quantum mechanics. In the meantime, one can ask if there any applications for teleporting thousands of spins? The answer is probably yes. In the future it is likely that quantum computers (i.e., computers capable of processing quantum information) will be built and may even be as ubiquitous as classical computers are today. These computers will need to exchange quantum information. One way these exchanges of information can occur is via a quantum phone, that is, a device capable of sending and received quantum messages. But when such phones are not available, the alternative is to do teleportation using a regular phone. So don't be surprised if some day in the next 100 years you see a quantum teleportation device for sale in your local computer store.

5. CONCLUSION
In the future it is likely that quantum computers (i.e., computers capable of processing quantum information) will be built and may even be as ubiquitous as classical computers are today. These computers will need to exchange quantum information. One way these exchanges of information can occur is via a quantum phone, that is, a device capable of sending and received quantum messages. But when such phones are not available, the alternative is to do teleportation using a regular phone. So don't be surprised if some day in the next 100 years you see a quantum teleportation device for sale in your local computer store.

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