Chinese and Finnish team finds way to tune out the noise in quantum transfers
- The researchers reduced external interference to improve the quality of a process known as quantum teleportation
- Experiment opens ‘intriguing pathways’ for future research, with possible implications for computing or communications
A joint Chinese-Finnish team of physicists has performed an experiment that could have important applications for the transmission of quantum information in fields such as computing or communications.
The process, known as quantum teleportation, transfers the state of a quantum particle – or qubit – from one place to another without physically sending the particle itself.
The researchers have been working for years to overcome the problems caused by external noise and interference that can significantly reduce the quality of the teleportation.
The key to the approach is a quantum entanglement, a bizarre phenomenon in the world of quantum mechanics in which two or more particles are linked and always share a single quantum state, no matter how far apart they are in space.
The transfer the team was attempting requires various quantum resources, including entanglement between an additional pair of qubits.
In their latest study, the researchers – from the University of Science and Technology of China in Anhui province and their collaborators from the University of Turku in Finland – successfully tested an innovative method to overcome the problem.
The work is based on exploiting a hybrid entanglement between different degrees of freedom between photons, or particles of light, according to Li Chuanfeng, a co-author of the study from the Chinese university.
