Scientists have taken a major step toward creating a quantum internet.
Technology would allow information to be “transported” for a moment. This would help achieve the promised revolution in quantum computing, as well as bring about a radical change in the way networks work.
But to get there, scientists must first understand the basic technology so that it can be used in more complex networks.
Scientists now say they have done some of this fundamental work in a new study that reports success in teleporting quantum information between two unconnected network nodes.
In the study, scientists created a quantum network with three nodes, giving each of these nodes a name: Alice, Bob and Charlie. Alice was connected to Bob on the net, and Bob was connected to Charlie, but Charlie was not connected to Bob.
The researchers say they have successfully shared information between Alice and Bob, despite the fact that they are not related.
So far, researchers have only been able to demonstrate connections between neighboring nodes, and the new study is the first of its kind.
Scientists now hope this is the first step in building a larger quantum network based on quantum information sharing.
That future is still “far away,” say researchers outside the new study. But the document offers a “potential way forward” to build real-world applications of technology.
“This achievement is not only a victory for basic science, but also a breakthrough in real-world problem-solving needed to move this compelling quantum application to the next step,” Oliver Slater and Yong-Su Kim wrote in an accompanying article.
In fact, building such systems will require more stable systems, as well as new interfaces that should improve system performance.
This will be crucial to bring breakthroughs to more sophisticated quantum systems, the authors say.
The success was reported in a new study, “Teleportation of Qubit between Neighboring Nodes in a Quantum Network,” published in Nature.
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