Brett Smith for redOrbit.

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Researchers from the Niels Bohr Institute have announced the capacity to consist ently teleport information between two clouds of gas atoms, according to a repor t in the journal Nature Physics. It is a very important step for quantum information research to have achieved suc h stable results that every attempt will succeed, said co-author Eugene Polzik, p rofessor at the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen. In their study, the research team used two non-connected glass containers filled with a cloud of billions of cesium gas atoms. To start the process, light was s ent into the first glass container, causing the quantum phenomenon known as enta nglement between light and gas. The result is an established quantum link, or sy nchronization, between light particles and atoms. When the specifically-calibrated laser light hits the gas atoms, the outermost e lectrons in the atoms react by aligning in the same direction. The direction, ei ther up or down, represent quantum information in the same way the numbers 0 and 1 do in binary computer code. After being hit with the laser, the cesium gas emits light particles containing this quantum information. The information-containing light is then transmitted t o the other gas container and a detector registers the quantum information. The detector then signals the first container and the direction of the atoms electron s are adjusted according to the signal, completing the quantum teleportation fro m the second to the first container. Because the gas atoms move at a speed of over 650 feet per second at room temper ature, they are constantly coming in contact with the glass wall of the containe r, losing any information they have acquired. To compensate for this, the resear ch group has developed a novel solution that might appear easy, but ended up bec oming fairly complicated. We use a coating of a kind of paraffin on the interior of the glass contains [sic ] and it causes the gas atoms to not lose their coding, even if they bump into t he glass wall, Polzik said. The research team also had to engineer a detector capable of registering light p articles. According to the report, the teleportation s range is currently less than 1.6 feet , an aspect researchers need to improve if the technology is to have any practic al applications. The range of (1.6 feet) is entirely due to the size of the laboratory, Polzik said , adding we could increase the range if we had the space and, in principle, we co uld teleport information, for example, to a satellite. The stable results are another step towards commercial use of a quantum communic ation network. Last month, a team of scientists at Los Alamos National Labs anno unced that they had been using quantum network for about two years. The team use d a groundbreaking network of nodes to transmit information via entangled photon s. Critics pointed out that the Los Alamos system isnt necessarily true quantum inte rnet. However, it offers a level of security only achievable using quantum commu nications. Due to Heisenbergs Uncertainty Principle, quantum communications are e xtremely difficult to hack, especially if the hacker wants to remain undetected.

Source: Brett Smith for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online