Subscribe free to our newsletters via your
. 24/7 Space News .




TIME AND SPACE
Researchers Advance 'Quantum Teleportation'
by Staff Writers
Pasadena CA (JPL) Nov 21, 2014


Quantum mechanics can be confusing. This cartoon helps explain recent research by NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, University of Geneva and NIST. For a full cartoon please go here.

The world at the quantum level, at the scale of particles too small for the eye to see, is very strange. It's possible, for instance, to have two particles that are "entangled" -- that is, they function as if they were connected, even if they are many miles away from each other.

New research co-authored by Francesco Marsili, microdevices engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, makes use of this phenomenon in a technological advancement published in the journal Nature Photonics.

Researchers succeeded in teleporting information about the quantum state of a photon, a particle of light, over 15.5 miles (25 kilometers) of optical fiber to a crystal "memory bank," setting a new record of distance traveled in this manner. The previous record in optical fiber was 3.7 miles (6 kilometers). This complex phenomenon is called "quantum teleportation."

The research could have implications for cryptography, which involves transmitting information securely, including communications between Earth and spacecraft.

"We can imprint the state of a system on another system, even when the two are far apart," Marsili said. "Using this effect in communications could help in building an intrinsically secure space communication network -- i.e., communication channels that cannot be hacked."

Marsili and colleagues at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Boulder, Colorado, developed devices that can detect single particles of light, called photons.

"It's hard to detect a single photon, so you need to make a sensitive detector," he said. "Here at JPL, in collaboration with NIST, we developed the most sensitive detector in the world."

How quantum teleportation works is complicated, but an analogy for the principle behind it may help: Let's say there are two people, Alice and Bob. Alice wants Bob to have a photon that's in the same "state" as her photon, which we'll call photon P. For the sake of this analogy, we'll pretend that the "state" is a color, and photon P is yellow.

A third person named Charlie sends out two entangled photons, photon A to Alice and photon B to Bob, which behave as if they are part of the same whole. Both of these photons start out as blue.

"In an entangled system, each part is connected to one another in a fundamental way, such that any action performed on a part of the entangled system has an effect on the whole entangled system," Marsili said.

Alice's two photons, P, which is yellow, and A, which is blue, "collide." Alice measures the photons as they annihilate one another. Although P and A are destroyed in the crash, P's yellow color is preserved. Because photon A and photon B are entangled, the yellow color is "teleported" to B. But in order to get photon B to become yellow, as photon P originally was, Alice needs to send Bob two bits of information to B the "classical" way -- for example, by sending pulses of light over an optical fiber.

"When Alice measures the state of her photon, Bob's photon changes state as well, as if flipping a switch," Marsili said. "But Bob cannot know how the switch flipped unless Alice sends him the bits of information classically." Bob does not know that his photon has changed to yellow without that additional information.

Quantum teleportation doesn't mean someone can pop from New York to San Francisco instantaneously, but it seems like science fiction in the sense that the state of a particle (photon P) is destroyed at one location but imprinted on another remote system (photon B) without the two particles ever interacting.

Another crucial piece of this story is that Bob has a specific crystal, which serves as a memory bank, for storing his entangled photon and serving as the recipient of the quantum state.

The researchers reached the record distance of 15.5 miles (25 kilometers) between "Alice" and "Bob" thanks to the ultrasensitive detectors developed at JPL-NIST.

"Reaching this distance could not have been possible without the JPL NIST detectors," said Felix Bussieres at the University of Geneva, Switzerland, who is the lead author of the study.

Quantum teleportation can be used to make systems, such as bank accounts, more secure over longer distances. This is also important to preventing attacks on communication channels in space.

"If you're communicating with your astronauts on Mars, you don't want to have hackers break the encrypted channel and give them false information," Marsili said.


Thanks for being here;
We need your help. The SpaceDaily news network continues to grow but revenues have never been harder to maintain.

With the rise of Ad Blockers, and Facebook - our traditional revenue sources via quality network advertising continues to decline. And unlike so many other news sites, we don't have a paywall - with those annoying usernames and passwords.

Our news coverage takes time and effort to publish 365 days a year.

If you find our news sites informative and useful then please consider becoming a regular supporter or for now make a one off contribution.
SpaceDaily Contributor
$5 Billed Once


credit card or paypal
SpaceDaily Monthly Supporter
$5 Billed Monthly


paypal only


.


Related Links
NASA JPL
Understanding Time and Space






Comment on this article via your Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, Hotmail login.

Share this article via these popular social media networks
del.icio.usdel.icio.us DiggDigg RedditReddit GoogleGoogle








TIME AND SPACE
New model clarifies photoexcited thin-film lattice dynamics
Washington DC (SPX) Nov 19, 2014
A research team from Germany developed an analytical model to describe the structural dynamics of photoexcited thin films and verified it by ultrafast X-ray diffraction. Lattice dynamics, atomic movements in a crystal structure, can influence the physical and chemical properties of a material. The phenomenon can be directly studied using ultrafast X-ray diffraction, in which femtosecond X- ... read more


TIME AND SPACE
Russia Preparing Joint Moon Exploration Agreement With EU

U.K. group to crowd-source funding for moon mission

After Mars, India space chief aims for the moon

China examines the three stages of lunar test run

TIME AND SPACE
Mars Exploration Program Director Named

Second Time Through, Mars Rover Examines Chosen Rocks

Mars was warm enough for flowing water, but only briefly

Several Drives Push Opportunity Over 41-Kilometer Mark

TIME AND SPACE
Astronauts to get 'ISSpresso' coffee machine

Ball Aerospace equips Orion with key avionics and antenna hardware

Tencent looks to the final travel frontier

ESA Commissions Airbus As contractor For Orion Service Module

TIME AND SPACE
China Launches Second Disaster Relief Satellite

China expects to introduce space law around 2020

China launches new remote sensing satellite

China publishes Earth, Moon photos taken by lunar orbiter

TIME AND SPACE
Soyuz docks at Space Station; Expedition 42 joins crew

Italy's first female astronaut heads to ISS in Russian craft

Space station gets zero-gravity 3-D printer

NASA Commercial Crew Partners Continue System Advancements

TIME AND SPACE
Elon Musk unveils 'drone ship' and 'x-wing' fins for rockets via Twitter

Russian Rocket Supply for Satellites Launches Continues

China launches Yaogan-24 remote sensing satellite

Soyuz Installed at Baikonur, Expected to Launch Wednesday

TIME AND SPACE
How to estimate the magnetic field of an exoplanet?

Follow the Dust to Find Planets

NASA's TESS mission cleared for next development phase

ADS primes ESA's CHEOPS to detect and classify exoplanets

TIME AND SPACE
Cloaking device hides across continuous range of angles

Swedish military gets upgraded radar facilityw/lll

A new approach to the delivery of satellites to orbit

Cooling with the coldest matter in the world




The content herein, unless otherwise known to be public domain, are Copyright 1995-2014 - Space Media Network. All websites are published in Australia and are solely subject to Australian law and governed by Fair Use principals for news reporting and research purposes. AFP, UPI and IANS news wire stories are copyright Agence France-Presse, United Press International and Indo-Asia News Service. ESA news reports are copyright European Space Agency. All NASA sourced material is public domain. Additional copyrights may apply in whole or part to other bona fide parties. Advertising does not imply endorsement, agreement or approval of any opinions, statements or information provided by Space Media Network on any Web page published or hosted by Space Media Network. Privacy Statement All images and articles appearing on Space Media Network have been edited or digitally altered in some way. Any requests to remove copyright material will be acted upon in a timely and appropriate manner. Any attempt to extort money from Space Media Network will be ignored and reported to Australian Law Enforcement Agencies as a potential case of financial fraud involving the use of a telephonic carriage device or postal service.