An international team of physicists has succeeded for the first time in teleporting information into a solid-state quantum memory, a prerequisite for the future of the quantum internet.
In quantum teleportation, there is no mass transfer, but only the information describing the state of the quantum system that transmits the signal is transferred. The quantum system that receives it adopts all the properties of the transmitted quantum state, creating an exact copy.
This type of technology is behind a new generation of computing systems, including the quantum internet, which, among other things, promises the exchange of information between computers with absolute security.
The new research development took place at the University of Geneva, where the international scientific team used a crystal impregnated with rare earth ions as a quantum memory, in which they teleported information for the first time through a common medium, such as optical fiber.
One of the basic requirements for information teleportation is the creation of coupled photons, with a wavelength proportional to the diameter of the optical fiber. Coupled particles are predicted by quantum physics, and are pairs of particles whose quantum properties influence each other (described by a common function), even when they are at a great distance from each other.
Creating coupled photons with such strict wavelength specifications was an additional difficulty for the researchers, who nevertheless managed to produce such pairs, and even at two different infrared frequencies.
The information they ultimately transmitted was the polarization of a photon with a wavelength of 1338nm. The signal traveled 12 kilometers of optical fiber to be transmitted from one quantum memory to another successfully, as subsequent measurements of the polarization of the receiving photon were exactly as predicted by quantum theory.
This is another important step for quantum computing systems, which have begun to attract increasing research interest.
Source: naftemporiki.gr
