In 2024, researchers in the US successfully teleported a quantum state of light over more than 30 kilometers (about 18 miles) of fiber optic cable, even amid heavy internet traffic—a feat once thought impossible.
While it won’t help you skip your commute or speed up streaming, transmitting quantum states through existing infrastructure marks a major step toward quantum networks, stronger encryption, and advanced sensing technologies.
A Breakthrough Once Thought Impossible, Says Lead Researcher
“This is incredibly exciting because nobody thought it was possible,” says Prem Kumar, a computing engineer at Northwestern University who led the study.
“Our research points to a future where next-generation quantum and classical networks can share the same fiber optic infrastructure, paving the way for advanced quantum communications.”
Resembling the teleportation seen in Star Trek, quantum teleportation transfers the potential state of one object to another by carefully erasing the original and recreating the same quantum configuration elsewhere.
While the measurement of both objects finalizes their states simultaneously, establishing their entangled quantum link still depends on sending a single wave of information across space.
Fragile Quantum States Need Careful Protection
Like cotton candy in a spring rain, an object’s quantum state is a delicate cloud of possibilities, liable to collapse into reality almost instantly. Electromagnetic radiation and the jostling of particles quickly destroy this quantum coherence unless it is carefully shielded.
Protecting quantum states inside a computer is one challenge, but sending a single photon through fiber optic cables crowded with bank transfers, cat videos, and messages—while keeping its quantum state intact—is much harder. It’s like tossing delicate quantum cotton candy into the Mississippi and hoping it survives the journey.
To protect their lone photon’s delicate state amid a 400-gigabit-per-second flood of internet traffic, the researchers used several techniques to confine its channel and prevent it from mixing with other signals.
Kumar says, “We carefully analyzed how light scatters and positioned our photons where it would minimize this effect.”
“This allowed us to carry out quantum communication without interference from the simultaneous classical data.”
First Quantum Teleportation Achieved Over a Live Internet Stream
While previous teams had simulated sending quantum information alongside classical internet traffic, Kumar’s group was the first to teleport a quantum state alongside a real, live internet stream.
Each experiment reinforces the idea that a quantum internet is on the horizon, offering computing engineers a powerful new set of tools for measurement, monitoring, encryption, and computation—without having to rebuild the existing internet.
“Quantum teleportation can securely link distant nodes with quantum connections,” says Kumar.
“Many assumed it would require specialized infrastructure to transmit photons. But by selecting the right wavelengths, we can use existing networks—allowing classical and quantum communications to operate side by side.”
Read the original article on:sciencealert
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