Sustained, High-Fidelity Quantum Teleportation Achieved for the First Time

Quantum Teleportation Concept

For the first time, scientists achieved sustained, long-distance teleportation of qubits of photons (particles of light) over 44 kilometers (28 miles) of fiber with a fidelity exceeding 90%. This breakthrough utilized a fiber-optic network, state-of-the-art single-photon detectors, and readily available equipment.

A viable quantum internet — a network in which information stored in qubits is shared over long distances through entanglement — would transform the fields of data storage, precision sensing, and computing, ushering in a new era of communication.

This month, scientists at Fermilab, a U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science national laboratory, and their partners took a significant step in the direction of realizing a quantum internet.

In a paper published in PRX Quantum, the team presents for the first time a demonstration of a sustained, long-distance (44 kilometers  or 28 miles of fiber) teleportation of qubits of photons (quanta of light) with fidelity greater than 90%. The qubits were teleported over a fiber-optic network using state-of-the-art single-photon detectors and off-the-shelf equipment.

“We’re thrilled by these results,” said Fermilab scientist Panagiotis Spentzouris, head of the Fermilab quantum science program and one of the paper’s co-authors. “This is a key achievement on the way to building a technology that will redefine how we conduct global communication.”

High-Fidelity Quantum Teleportation

In a demonstration of high-fidelity quantum teleportation at the Fermilab Quantum Network, fiber-optic cables connect off-the-shelf devices (shown above), as well as state-of-the-art R&D devices. Credit: Fermilab

Quantum teleportation is a “disembodied” transfer of quantum states from one location to another. The quantum teleportation of a qubit is achieved using quantum entanglement, in which two or more particles are inextricably linked to each other. If an entangled pair of particles is shared between two separate locations, no matter the distance between them, the encoded information is teleported.

The joint team — researchers at Fermilab, AT&T, Caltech, Harvard University, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and University of Calgary — successfully teleported qubits on two systems: the Caltech Quantum Network, or CQNET, and the Fermilab Quantum Network, or FQNET. The systems were designed, built, commissioned, and deployed by Caltech’s public-private research program on Intelligent Quantum Networks and Technologies, or IN-Q-NET.

“We are very proud to have achieved this milestone on sustainable, high-performing, and scalable quantum teleportation systems,” said Maria Spiropulu, Shang-Yi Ch’en professor of physics at Caltech and director of the IN-Q-NET research program. “The results will be further improved with system upgrades we are expecting to complete by Q2 2021.”

CQNET and FQNET, which feature near-autonomous data processing, are compatible both with existing telecommunication infrastructure and with emerging quantum processing and storage devices. Researchers are using them to improve the fidelity and rate of entanglement distribution, with an emphasis on complex quantum communication protocols and fundamental science.

The achievement comes just a few months after the U.S. Department of Energy unveiled its blueprint for a national quantum internet at a press conference in Chicago.

“With this demonstration, we’re beginning to lay the foundation for the construction of a Chicago-area metropolitan quantum network,” Spentzouris said. The Chicagoland network, called the Illinois Express Quantum Network, is being designed by Fermilab in collaboration with Argonne National Laboratory, Caltech, Northwestern University, and industry partners.

This research was supported by DOE’s Office of Science through the Quantum Information Science-Enabled Discovery (QuantISED) program.

“The feat is a testament to the success of collaboration across disciplines and institutions, which drives so much of what we accomplish in science,” said Fermilab Deputy Director of Research Joe Lykken. “I commend the IN-Q-NET team and our partners in academia and industry on this first-of-its-kind achievement in quantum teleportation.”

Reference: “Teleportation Systems Toward a Quantum Internet” by Raju Valivarthi, Samantha I. Davis, Cristián Peña, Si Xie, Nikolai Lauk, Lautaro Narváez, Jason P. Allmaras, Andrew D. Beyer, Yewon Gim, Meraj Hussein, George Iskander, Hyunseong Linus Kim, Boris Korzh, Andrew Mueller, Mandy Rominsky, Matthew Shaw, Dawn Tang, Emma E. Wollman, Christoph Simon, Panagiotis Spentzouris, Daniel Oblak, Neil Sinclair and Maria Spiropulu, 4 December 2020, PRX Quantum.
DOI: 10.1103/PRXQuantum.1.020317

9 Comments on "Sustained, High-Fidelity Quantum Teleportation Achieved for the First Time"

  1. meme of the moment- “… If an entangled pair of particles is shared between two separate locations, no matter the distance between them, the encoded information is teleported…….” 👉 https://www.instagram.com/chemicalgorithms/

  2. Perhaps this is an unwarranted assumption, did we just achieve FTL communication? If we have achieved FTL communication can we now detect when/if others are doing the same.

  3. FTL? Faster than thought? Astounding.

  4. Sebastien Lorin Tides | December 19, 2020 at 1:55 pm | Reply

    I was going to post first, but I took apart my time machine to make a wedding ring for a friend, now wife. The relationship was lightlike, so it is all legit. That means I count this as posting first, even though it’s ..is. I forgot I already posted.

  5. Err, but they’re using cables.
    Quantum entangled photons of light means very little if the whole system has to be linked up with cables; fancy fibre optic cables or not, its a regression. 45km? The telegram is more advanced than that.

  6. This article contains absolutely no new information. We already know about Quantum Entanglement. So, you guys hooked up some wires and sent some information over a Fiber Optic network? That’s it?

    I’m STUNNED!!!

    Let me know when I can beam down to the 7-11 and pick up my Scratch-off…

    SMH

  7. Ernest John Stockham | December 20, 2020 at 8:04 pm | Reply

    In manipulation of the entangled particles and the infrastructure they use , both natural or man made arenas will go along way in understanding how the vacuum must be a defining facture in the infancy of the intire equation ,retaining a Universal puncture a big job among many for the black-holes, distribution of matter on the other side could be tested by , reflections mirroring the process in the patterns displayed on the Fermi bubbles, the upper bubbles display a picture of the opposing bubbles that are identical in shape but negative in colour and reasonably easy to unravel why and tie afew lose ends easly

  8. Quantum particles moves faster as per the scientist claimed. But for the internet whether it can travel in space with same speed as in surface or in computer. If so then it will be easier to get information about the whole universe in a better way

  9. I did not see one comment that has any idea what an achievement this actually is and why its useful. You can not communicate with entanglement like you can with regular 1s and 0s. Qubits encode a state, that may otherwise require more atoms in the universe to hold.

    The entanglement part just means the states are corilated, and you can only verify that with stand communication protocols. No communication can be gained from these correlations.

    The thing that this network did was maintain the very delicate entangled state over vast distances, which is remarkable in numerous ways. This will allow us to have infinitely secure communication or be able to transfer quantum states directly between distant quantum comouters. This is a huge gain for all research based around quantum technology, which is basically all of them today.

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