Ground-to-space quantum teleportation
Chinese scientists recently completed a quantum teleportation experiment, the results of which were published in the latest issue of the scientific journal Nature.
In the experiment, the scientists transmitted quantum states of photons from a ground station about 5,100 meters above sea level in Ngari prefecture in Southwest China’s Tibet autonomous region to the satellite 500 kilometers overhead.
The satellite is named “Micius” after a 5th century BC Chinese philosopher and scientist who is credited with being the first person ever to conduct optical experiments.
The reviewers of Nature commented that the results represent an important breakthrough in the quest for quantum communication over long distances.
The leading scientist of the Quantum Experiments at Space Scale (QUESS) program, Pan Jianwei, said that quantum teleportation allows faithful transfer of unknown quantum states from one object to another over a long distance, without physical travel of the object itself.
Pan regards the achievement as a step toward the teleportation of more complex quantum systems. But the prospect of using it to transport people is still a distant dream, and the technology is now mainly applied in the areas of quantum communication and computing, Pan said.