Innovations such as computing and quantum communication over long distances are great on paper, ideations and equations. However, this type of technology will never be available to you and me unless we can figure out a way to create the first quantum networks. Oops, wait ...
The day before yesterday , German scientists from the Institute of Quantum Physics Max Planck announced what may be considered the first prototype of such a network, where a link between quantum per two atoms very far apart (21 meters) was successfully established .
The traquitana for the tests was assembled as follows: each laboratory housed two compositions are exactly alike - an optical cavity containing a rubidium atom between a pair of reflective mirrors separated by a distance of one millimeter.
Even rubidium containing a stable isotope and high activity - and slightly radioactive half-life of 49 billion years (3 times the estimated age of the universe) - and be kind of a darling in this type of experiment, the result was really amazing. Each atom of rubidium, one in each laboratory, served as a qubit (quantum bit). When this atom gives off a photon, the polarization of the photon contains information produced in qubit, ie, the 'quantum state' of this record.
The trick was when the Germans caused the atom to release a photon by a laser, so that he could be irradiated onto the optical fiber (60 meters in length) that lead to the second laboratory. When the second atom of rubidium absorbed the photon emitted by the first, he has amassed quite the same quantum state of the atom source. Shazam! Information transmitted and recorded correctly.
For us mere mortals only remains to determine the reason quite special - and very well drawn - for this first transmission was successful. Yes, the mirrors.
Photos are extremely small. The most likely is the way they make mistakes and do not hatch or are as planned, missing the address and not transferring the record. In the German model, we can even say that there was some "delay" in this meeting, although I would say that today it is no more than merely esculachar conquest.
In the near future, the speed of transmission should be even more enhanced, probably with something like these mirrors, since they were the ones responsible for making the photons from one atom ricocheteassem fired as many times as necessary to meet another atom. Voila! Now imagine when the path does not involve these richochetes?
But more exciting was to proof that scientists were able to weave these atoms via quantum, regardless of the distance between them. This has been something of a lost ark harvest of this research, especially because the quantum information or record is extremely sensitive and can not be cloned. Still, no change occurred when the atoms are entangled quantum mechanically by the German model, even when the photon is detached from the first, nor when it was transferred to the second.
Such is the enthusiasm that the experience with the mirror optical cavities should be improved to form a network node type and they should act as "quantum repeaters". The improvement of the method may result in the composition of ultra-fast networks, secure and very low cost so that the scalar technology to the point of making business. The processing and data transmission via quantum eliminate a lot of hardware and literally changed the game data computing as we know it today.
A somewhat more complete review of the experiment are available from Scientific Computing. Meanwhile, we dream of the day we'll stop talking in bits, to start talking about qubits.
The day before yesterday , German scientists from the Institute of Quantum Physics Max Planck announced what may be considered the first prototype of such a network, where a link between quantum per two atoms very far apart (21 meters) was successfully established .
The traquitana for the tests was assembled as follows: each laboratory housed two compositions are exactly alike - an optical cavity containing a rubidium atom between a pair of reflective mirrors separated by a distance of one millimeter.
Even rubidium containing a stable isotope and high activity - and slightly radioactive half-life of 49 billion years (3 times the estimated age of the universe) - and be kind of a darling in this type of experiment, the result was really amazing. Each atom of rubidium, one in each laboratory, served as a qubit (quantum bit). When this atom gives off a photon, the polarization of the photon contains information produced in qubit, ie, the 'quantum state' of this record.
The trick was when the Germans caused the atom to release a photon by a laser, so that he could be irradiated onto the optical fiber (60 meters in length) that lead to the second laboratory. When the second atom of rubidium absorbed the photon emitted by the first, he has amassed quite the same quantum state of the atom source. Shazam! Information transmitted and recorded correctly.
For us mere mortals only remains to determine the reason quite special - and very well drawn - for this first transmission was successful. Yes, the mirrors.
Photos are extremely small. The most likely is the way they make mistakes and do not hatch or are as planned, missing the address and not transferring the record. In the German model, we can even say that there was some "delay" in this meeting, although I would say that today it is no more than merely esculachar conquest.
In the near future, the speed of transmission should be even more enhanced, probably with something like these mirrors, since they were the ones responsible for making the photons from one atom ricocheteassem fired as many times as necessary to meet another atom. Voila! Now imagine when the path does not involve these richochetes?
But more exciting was to proof that scientists were able to weave these atoms via quantum, regardless of the distance between them. This has been something of a lost ark harvest of this research, especially because the quantum information or record is extremely sensitive and can not be cloned. Still, no change occurred when the atoms are entangled quantum mechanically by the German model, even when the photon is detached from the first, nor when it was transferred to the second.
Such is the enthusiasm that the experience with the mirror optical cavities should be improved to form a network node type and they should act as "quantum repeaters". The improvement of the method may result in the composition of ultra-fast networks, secure and very low cost so that the scalar technology to the point of making business. The processing and data transmission via quantum eliminate a lot of hardware and literally changed the game data computing as we know it today.
A somewhat more complete review of the experiment are available from Scientific Computing. Meanwhile, we dream of the day we'll stop talking in bits, to start talking about qubits.
