Quantum computers, which use attributes of quantum particles like atoms and photons to represent data, promise to solve certain very large problems many orders of magnitude faster than is possible using today's computers. The challenge is being able to manipulate particles well enough to carry out computing.
A key step is being able to entangle five particles, which would make it possible to check computations for errors and teleport quantum information within and between computers.
Researchers from the University of Science and Technology of China, the University of Innsbruck in Austria, and the University of Heidelberg in Germany have entangled five photons.
Error correction uses mathematical codes to detect when a bit has been accidentally flipped, and is widely used in classical computing because electronic and magnetic bits occasionally switch accidentally from a 1 to a 0 or vice versa. Quantum bits are more delicate and require an error correction method to be feasible.
The researchers used the five-photon entanglement process to carry out open-destination teleportation, which makes it possible to transmit information to any one of several processors within a quantum computer or nodes in a quantum network. Quantum teleportation is akin to faxing a document and in the process destroying the original.
It will be more than a decade before the technology is practical, according to the researchers. The work appeared in the July 1, 2004 issue of Nature.
Technology Research News (MIT FEED)
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