Wednesday, September 12, 2012 9:56:13 AM
'Quantum Teleportation' Beams Information Farther Than Ever Before
The Optical Ground Station, run by the European Space Agency on the Canary Island of Tenerife, was used to receive photons in a quantum teleportation experiment reported in September 2012.
CREDIT: ESA
Clara Moskowitz, LiveScience senior writer
Date: 06 September 2012 Time: 08:37 AM ET
Physicists have "teleported" quantum information farther than ever in a new study reported Wednesday (Sept. 5).
This kind of teleportation isn't quite what Scotty was "beaming up" on television's Star Trek, but it does represent a kind of magic of its own. While Star Trek's teleporters transport people from place to place instantaneously, quantum teleportation [ http://www.livescience.com/13715-teleportation-schrodingers-cat-quantum-light.html ] sends information.
A team of scientists from Austria, Canada and Germany have now beamed the quantum state of a particle of light from one island to another 89 miles (143 kilometers) away.
"One can actually transfer the quantum states of a particle — in our case a photon — from one location to another location without physically transferring this photon itself," explained physicist Xiaosong Ma of the Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information at the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna.
To do this, the researchers started out with three particles: one particle to be teleported, and two "entangled" particles. Entanglement [ http://www.livescience.com/19975-spooky-quantum-entanglement.html ] is one of the most bizarre implications of the theory of quantum mechanics, which governs the physics of tiny particles. When two particles are entangled, they become connected in such a way that, even if separated over vast distances, an action performed on one affects the other.
In the recent experiment, all three photons started out on the island of La Palma, one of the Canary Islands off the coast of Spain. One of the entangled photons was then sent through the air 89 miles to the Canary Island of Tenerife. Since the particles were entangled, when a measurement was made of the quantum states of the two particles on La Palma, it affected the particle on Tenerife, too, allowing the first particle to essentially be recreated in a new location without traversing the distance. [Stunning Photos of the Very Small [ http://www.livescience.com/16369-nikon-small-world-photos-2011.html ]]
This achievement beat the previous quantum teleportation [ http://www.livescience.com/7647-teleportation-milestone-achieved.html ] distance record of 60 miles (97 km), set by a Chinese research group just months ago. It represents a significant step toward establishing a "quantum internet" that could allow messages to be sent more securely, and calculations to be completed more quickly, scientists say.
"The quantum internet is predicted to be the next-generation information processing platform, promising secure communication and an exponential speed-up in distributed computation," the researchers write in a paper detailing their experiment published online Wednesday in the journal Nature.
The next step will be to establish quantum teleportation between Earth and orbiting satellites.
"The future goal of our research work will be to do such experiments on the satellite level," Ma told LiveScience. "This will enable intercontinental quantum information exchange."
Copyright © 2012 TechMediaNetwork.com
http://www.livescience.com/22955-quantum-teleportation-distance-record.html [with comments]
===
In all-optical switch, nanowires manipulate light
Computers may be getting faster every year, but those advances in computer speed could be dwarfed if their 1's and 0's were represented by bursts of light, instead of electricity. Above, laser light is emitted from the end of a cadmium sulfide nanowire.
(Credit: University of Pennsylvania)
Posted by Evan Lerner-Pennsylvania on Tuesday, September 11, 2012 11:37
U. PENNSYLVANIA (US) — Scientists have developed the first all-optical photonic switch fashioned from nanowires.
Researchers combined these photonic switches into a logic gate, a fundamental component of computer chips that process information, which they describe in the journal Nature Nanotechnology [ http://www.nature.com/nnano/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nnano.2012.144.html ].
The innovation built on the team’s earlier work, which showed that their cadmium sulfide nanowires exhibited extremely strong light-matter coupling, making them especially efficient at manipulating light.
This quality is crucial for the development of nanoscale photonic circuits, as existing mechanisms for controlling the flow of light are bulkier and require more energy than their electronic analogs.
“The biggest challenge for photonic structures on the nanoscale is getting the light in, manipulating it once it’s there and then getting it out,” says Ritesh Agarwal, an associate professor in materials science and engineering at the University of Pennsylvania, who led the research with graduate student Brian Piccione.
“Our major innovation was how we solved the first problem, in that it allowed us to use the nanowires themselves for an on-chip light source,” explains Agarwal.
The research team began by precisely cutting a gap into a nanowire. They then pumped enough energy into the first nanowire segment that it began to emit laser light from its end and through the gap. Because the researchers started with a single nanowire, the two segment ends were perfectly matched, allowing the second segment to efficiently absorb and transmit the light down its length.
“Once we have the light in the second segment, we shine another light through the structure and turn off what is being transported through that wire,” Agarwal says. “That’s what makes it a switch.”
The researchers were able to measure the intensity of the light coming out of the end of the second nanowire and to show that the switch could effectively represent the binary states used in logic devices.
“Putting switches together lets you make logic gates, and assembling logic gates allows you to do computation,” Piccione says. “We used these optical switches to construct a NAND gate, which is a fundamental building block of modern computer processing.”
A “NAND gate,” which stands for “not and,” returns a “0? output when all its inputs are “1.” It was constructed by the researchers by combining two nanowire switches into a Y-shaped configuration.
NAND gates are important for computation because they are “functionally complete,” which means that, when put in the right sequence, they can do any kind of logical operation and thus form the basis for general-purpose computer processors.
“We see a future where ‘consumer electronics’ become ‘consumer photonics’,” Agarwal says. “And this study shows that is possible.”
The U.S. Army Research Office and the National Institutes of Health’s New Innovator Award Program supported the research.
Source: University of Pennsylvania [ http://www.upenn.edu/pennnews/news/penn-researchers-make-first-all-optical-nanowire-switch ]
© 2012 Futurity.org
http://www.futurity.org/science-technology/in-all-optical-switch-nanowires-manipulate-light/ [no comments yet]
===
(linked in) http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=79469623 and preceding (and any future following)
The Optical Ground Station, run by the European Space Agency on the Canary Island of Tenerife, was used to receive photons in a quantum teleportation experiment reported in September 2012.
CREDIT: ESA
Clara Moskowitz, LiveScience senior writer
Date: 06 September 2012 Time: 08:37 AM ET
Physicists have "teleported" quantum information farther than ever in a new study reported Wednesday (Sept. 5).
This kind of teleportation isn't quite what Scotty was "beaming up" on television's Star Trek, but it does represent a kind of magic of its own. While Star Trek's teleporters transport people from place to place instantaneously, quantum teleportation [ http://www.livescience.com/13715-teleportation-schrodingers-cat-quantum-light.html ] sends information.
A team of scientists from Austria, Canada and Germany have now beamed the quantum state of a particle of light from one island to another 89 miles (143 kilometers) away.
"One can actually transfer the quantum states of a particle — in our case a photon — from one location to another location without physically transferring this photon itself," explained physicist Xiaosong Ma of the Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information at the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna.
To do this, the researchers started out with three particles: one particle to be teleported, and two "entangled" particles. Entanglement [ http://www.livescience.com/19975-spooky-quantum-entanglement.html ] is one of the most bizarre implications of the theory of quantum mechanics, which governs the physics of tiny particles. When two particles are entangled, they become connected in such a way that, even if separated over vast distances, an action performed on one affects the other.
In the recent experiment, all three photons started out on the island of La Palma, one of the Canary Islands off the coast of Spain. One of the entangled photons was then sent through the air 89 miles to the Canary Island of Tenerife. Since the particles were entangled, when a measurement was made of the quantum states of the two particles on La Palma, it affected the particle on Tenerife, too, allowing the first particle to essentially be recreated in a new location without traversing the distance. [Stunning Photos of the Very Small [ http://www.livescience.com/16369-nikon-small-world-photos-2011.html ]]
This achievement beat the previous quantum teleportation [ http://www.livescience.com/7647-teleportation-milestone-achieved.html ] distance record of 60 miles (97 km), set by a Chinese research group just months ago. It represents a significant step toward establishing a "quantum internet" that could allow messages to be sent more securely, and calculations to be completed more quickly, scientists say.
"The quantum internet is predicted to be the next-generation information processing platform, promising secure communication and an exponential speed-up in distributed computation," the researchers write in a paper detailing their experiment published online Wednesday in the journal Nature.
The next step will be to establish quantum teleportation between Earth and orbiting satellites.
"The future goal of our research work will be to do such experiments on the satellite level," Ma told LiveScience. "This will enable intercontinental quantum information exchange."
Copyright © 2012 TechMediaNetwork.com
http://www.livescience.com/22955-quantum-teleportation-distance-record.html [with comments]
===
In all-optical switch, nanowires manipulate light
Computers may be getting faster every year, but those advances in computer speed could be dwarfed if their 1's and 0's were represented by bursts of light, instead of electricity. Above, laser light is emitted from the end of a cadmium sulfide nanowire.
(Credit: University of Pennsylvania)
Posted by Evan Lerner-Pennsylvania on Tuesday, September 11, 2012 11:37
U. PENNSYLVANIA (US) — Scientists have developed the first all-optical photonic switch fashioned from nanowires.
Researchers combined these photonic switches into a logic gate, a fundamental component of computer chips that process information, which they describe in the journal Nature Nanotechnology [ http://www.nature.com/nnano/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nnano.2012.144.html ].
The innovation built on the team’s earlier work, which showed that their cadmium sulfide nanowires exhibited extremely strong light-matter coupling, making them especially efficient at manipulating light.
This quality is crucial for the development of nanoscale photonic circuits, as existing mechanisms for controlling the flow of light are bulkier and require more energy than their electronic analogs.
“The biggest challenge for photonic structures on the nanoscale is getting the light in, manipulating it once it’s there and then getting it out,” says Ritesh Agarwal, an associate professor in materials science and engineering at the University of Pennsylvania, who led the research with graduate student Brian Piccione.
“Our major innovation was how we solved the first problem, in that it allowed us to use the nanowires themselves for an on-chip light source,” explains Agarwal.
The research team began by precisely cutting a gap into a nanowire. They then pumped enough energy into the first nanowire segment that it began to emit laser light from its end and through the gap. Because the researchers started with a single nanowire, the two segment ends were perfectly matched, allowing the second segment to efficiently absorb and transmit the light down its length.
“Once we have the light in the second segment, we shine another light through the structure and turn off what is being transported through that wire,” Agarwal says. “That’s what makes it a switch.”
The researchers were able to measure the intensity of the light coming out of the end of the second nanowire and to show that the switch could effectively represent the binary states used in logic devices.
“Putting switches together lets you make logic gates, and assembling logic gates allows you to do computation,” Piccione says. “We used these optical switches to construct a NAND gate, which is a fundamental building block of modern computer processing.”
A “NAND gate,” which stands for “not and,” returns a “0? output when all its inputs are “1.” It was constructed by the researchers by combining two nanowire switches into a Y-shaped configuration.
NAND gates are important for computation because they are “functionally complete,” which means that, when put in the right sequence, they can do any kind of logical operation and thus form the basis for general-purpose computer processors.
“We see a future where ‘consumer electronics’ become ‘consumer photonics’,” Agarwal says. “And this study shows that is possible.”
The U.S. Army Research Office and the National Institutes of Health’s New Innovator Award Program supported the research.
Source: University of Pennsylvania [ http://www.upenn.edu/pennnews/news/penn-researchers-make-first-all-optical-nanowire-switch ]
© 2012 Futurity.org
http://www.futurity.org/science-technology/in-all-optical-switch-nanowires-manipulate-light/ [no comments yet]
===
(linked in) http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=79469623 and preceding (and any future following)
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