Teleportation is a crucial step toward better quantum computing.
One of the most famous catchphrases from the “Star Trek” series is “beam me up.” It’s the command used when a character wants to teleport back to the Starship Enterprise from a distant area.
While human teleportation is now merely a science fiction concept, it is already achievable in the subatomic world of quantum mechanics — though not in the way that is commonly shown on television. Teleportation in the quantum realm requires the transmission of information rather than the transmission of materials.
Two distant, entangled particles are involved in quantum teleportation, in which the state of a third particle “teleports” its state to the two entangled particles instantly.
Scientists confirmed last year that information could be transmitted between photons on computer circuits even if they were not physically connected. Teleportation between electrons may now be achievable, according to a National Science Foundation-funded study by experts at the University of Rochester and Purdue University.
The researchers, which include Rochester physicists John Nichol and Andrew Jordan, examine new techniques of producing quantum-mechanical interactions between distant electrons in an article published in Nature Communications and one that will appear in Physical Review X.
According to the researchers, the finding is a crucial step toward enhancing quantum computing and has the potential to change technology, health, and science by allowing for quicker and more efficient processors and sensors.
Quantum teleportation is an example of quantum entanglement, or “spooky activity at a distance,” as Albert Einstein famously put it. The properties of one particle affect the properties of another in entanglement, a fundamental notion in quantum physics, even when the particles are separated by a great distance.
