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December 16, 2020 – A viable quantum internet – a network in which information stored in qubits is shared over long distances by entanglement – would transform the fields of data storage, precision sensing and computing, ushering in a new era Communication.
This month, scientists at Fermilab, a national laboratory of the US Department of Energy’s Bureau of Science, and their partners took a significant step forward in achieving a quantum internet.
In an article published in PRX Quantum, the team presents for the first time a demonstration of a sustained and long distance teleportation (44 kilometers of fiber) of photon qubits (quanta of light) with a fidelity of better than 90%. The qubits were teleported over a fiber optic network using state-of-the-art single-photon detectors and commercially available equipment.
“We are delighted with these results,” said Panagiotis Spentzouris, Fermilab scientist, manager of the Fermilab quantum science program and one of the co-authors of the article. “This is a key achievement on the path to building a technology that will redefine the way we conduct global communication.”
Quantum teleportation is a “disembodied” transfer of quantum states from one place 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 a pair of entangled particles are shared between two distinct locations, no matter how far apart, the encoded information is teleported.
The joint team – researchers from Fermilab, AT&T, Caltech, Harvard University, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and University of Calgary – successfully teleported qubits to 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 in Intelligent Quantum Networks and Technologies, or IN-Q-NET.
“We are very proud to have taken this important milestone on sustainable, high performance and scalable quantum teleportation systems,” said Maria Spiropulu, Shang-Yi Ch’en physics professor at Caltech and director of the IN-Q research program. -NET. “The results will be further improved with the system upgrades that we plan to complete by the second quarter of 2021.”
CQNET and FQNET, which have near-autonomous data processing, are compatible both with the existing telecommunications infrastructure and with new quantum processing and storage devices. Researchers use them to improve the fidelity and distribution rate of entanglement, with a focus on complex quantum communication protocols and basic science.
The achievement comes just months after the US Department of Energy unveiled its plan for a national quantum internet at a press conference in Chicago.
“With this demonstration, we are starting to lay the foundation for building a metropolitan quantum network in the Chicago area,” said Spentzouris. The Chicagoland network, called the Illinois Express Quantum Network, is designed by Fermilab in collaboration with Argonne National Laboratory, Caltech, Northwestern University and industrial partners.
This research was supported by the DOE Office of Science as part of the Quantum Information Science-Enabled Discovery (QuantISED) program.
“This achievement is a testament to the successful collaboration between disciplines and institutions, which drives much of what we do in science,” said Joe Lykken, deputy director of research at Fermilab. “I congratulate the IN-Q-NET team and our university and industrial partners for this unique achievement in the field of quantum teleportation.”
Learn more about the result.
Fermilab is one of America’s premier national laboratories for particle physics and accelerator research. A laboratory of the Office of Science of the US Department of Energy, Fermilab is located near Chicago, Illinois, and operated under contract by the Fermi Research Alliance LLC, a joint partnership between the University of Chicago and the Universities Research Association, Inc. Visit the Fermilab website at www .fnal.gov.
The Office of Science is the largest proponent of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States and works to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, visit science.energy.gov.
Source: Fermilab
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