Chinese quantum scientists honored
For the first time in its 96-year history, the Newcomb Cleveland Prize, the oldest award given by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, was awarded to scientists in China.
Pan Jianwei, a Chinese physicist known for his work in the field of quantum entanglement, led a team that used a satellite to send photon pairs through the near vacuum of space and successfully measure quantum keys at receiving stations in the Tibet autonomous region 1,203 kilometers apart.
The research — titled “Satellitebased entanglement distribution over 1200 kilometers” — was published in the journal Science in June 2017.
It was selected for the NewcombCleveland prize as the paper with the most impact to be published in Science over the previous year.
The research shows that it may be possible for a network of satellites to one day form the infrastructure of a quantum internet.
“Through decades of effort, the achievements made by our team have shown to people that quantum information science is not only of great scientific significance but also of great practical value,” Pan, who is vice-president of the University of Science and Technology of China, said in a note to China Daily.
“I think that’s why this time the Cleveland Award was awarded to us. It is a great inspiration to our team and the whole community of quantum information.”
Jeremy M. Berg, editor-in-chief of the Science family of journals, said that Pan and his team extended the limits of quantum communication by “many hundreds of kilometers using through-space communication to and from a satellite”.
“This achievement required both conceptual skill in imagining the project and great technological skills across a range of disciplines to turn this idea into a reality,” Berg said. “Professor Pan and his team are being recognized for taking a key tool for quantum communication to the next level, and for communicating this excellent result clearly to the scientific community and to the public.”
Yin Juan, an associate professor at the university, accepted the award on behalf of the team. Yin was the lead author of the paper and chief designer of the satellite’s payload.
“One hundred years ago, when Einstein came to China, he saw a weak and divided country struggling to survive war. As China grows, we are happy to have the opportunity to contribute to the advancement of science with people all over the world,” Yin said.
Berg characterized the paper as describing “an exciting advance that has tremendous potential for application based on deep fundamental principles from physics”.
“In the future, we aim to have a global-scale quantum network that can provide fast secure communication services,” Pan said.
Yin added: “Many technical barriers need to be broken, such as how to reduce weight and lower costs.”
The American Association for the Advancement of Science is an international nonprofit organization based in the United States with the goals of promoting cooperation between scientists and supporting scientific education and outreach for the betterment of humanity.