Scientists have taken an important step towards creating a quantum Internet.
Technology would allow information to be “transported” in an instant. It would help bring about a revolution in the promised quantum computing, as well as bring about a radical change in the way networks work.
But to get there, scientists must first figure out the basic technology so that it can be used in more complex networks.
Scientists now say they have been part of this fundamental work, in a new study that reports a successful teleportation of quantum information between two nodes in a network that are not connected to each other.
In the study, scientists created a quantum network of three nodes, giving each of these nodes a name: Alice, Bob and Charlie. On the net, Alice was connected to Bob, and Bob was connected to Charlie, but Charlie was not connected to Bob.
Scientists say they have successfully shared information between Alice and Bob, even though they are not connected.
So far, researchers have only been able to demonstrate connections between neighboring nodes, and the new study represents the first such success.
Scientists now expect it to be a first step in building a larger quantum network based on the exchange of quantum information.
That future is still “a long way off,” researchers say is far from the new study. But the paper offers a “potential path” to creating real applications of technology.
“This achievement is not only a victory for fundamental science, but also a breakthrough in real-world problem-solving needed to move this fascinating quantum application to the next step,” wrote Oliver Slattery and Yong-Su Kim in a attached article.
Actually, building these systems will require more robust systems as well as new interfaces that should improve system efficiency.
This will be crucial in bringing advances in work to more complex quantum systems, the authors say.
The success is reported in a new study, “Qubit teleportation between non-veinsing nodes in a quantum network,” published in Nature.