Quantum entanglement and teleportation are concepts that sound like they’re straight out of a science fiction movie, but they’re fast becoming a very real aspect of the technology that will define our future. A future where information is instant and secure, where computers can answer questions too complex for even the fastest of the world’s supercomputers today, and where sensors are so fine-tuned that they can pick up on the smallest changes in your body or the environment. That’s the promise of quantum science—and it’s already underway.
At the core of this revolution lies quantum entanglement. It’s a strange phenomenon where two particles become so closely entwined that whatever occurs to one immediately occurs to the other, no matter how far apart they are. It is this strange connection that makes quantum teleportation possible—it makes it possible to send the state of a particle from one place to another without actually moving the particle itself. The technique, in a study launched by Professor Guo Guangcan of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, utilizes entanglement and measurement to make what is heard to be from science fiction a practical scientific tool.
Why is this important? One large reason has to do with communication. Classical methods degrade over distance, whether it’s along cables or through the air. But quantum teleportation circumvents that issue. It enables information to “leap” over long distances without losing quality. This means the possibility of super-secure communications systems. For example, by utilizing quantum entanglement, scientists can generate cryptographic keys that are unbreakable—something that classical technology can’t provide.
Over the past few years, the advances have been phenomenal. Scientists at the University of Science and Technology of China, collaborating with Professors Liu Biheng and Li Chuanfeng, have succeeded in making the most precise 32-dimensional quantum entanglement in the world and transmitting it over 11 kilometers of fiber optic cable. These are not science experiments—they’re actual developments towards constructing quantum networks, and perhaps even a global quantum internevery shortlyre.
But communication is only half the story of entanglement. In quantum computing, it’s what enables quantum bits—or qubits—to interact in powerful combinations. While classic bits are 0 or 1, qubits can be many things simultaneously. Entanglement enables them to interact in such a way that it becomes possible to solve extremely complicated challenges—breakthroughs in medicine, materials science, or even forecasting the weather.
Quantum entanglement is also accelerating the limits of precision measurement. With entangled states, researchers can build apparatuses that are exponentially more sensitive than those currently available. That translates to improved tools for everything from measuring slight changes in gravity to finding diseases well before they turn up as symptoms.
In the future, research on high-dimensional entanglement is driving a wave of new technology that is more resistant to interference and capable of transmitting more data. Researchers are even attempting to generate remote entanglement between objects such as micromechanical oscillators. Those endeavors are setting the foundation for quantum memory devices that can store and dispense entangled information over distances, which is essential for developing useful quantum communication networks.
They’re becoming fundamental aspects of a new technology age—an age where data is more secure, computers are more intelligent, and our devices are more accurate than ever before.