Scientists Performed the First Complex Quantum Teleportation

While the theoretical possibility of multidimensional quantum teleportation has been known to scientists for nearly three decades, a research team has developed a new experimental method and the necessary technology to finally achieve it.

Researchers from the Austrian Academy of Sciences and the University of Vienna, together with their colleagues at the University of Science and Technology in China, have for the first time in history teleported three-dimensional quantum states, or else defined as "quartits."

According to Phys.org, while scientists knew that multidimensional quantum teleportation was possible since the 1990s, the team first needed to develop the tools needed to carry out this remarkable scientific experience.

"First, we had to develop an experimental method for large-scale teleportation, and to develop the technology we needed," says Manuel Erhard of the Vienna Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information of the Austrian Academy of Sciences.

The quantum teleportation method, "encoded in the possible paths a photon can take", involves the use of a multipath beam splitter "that directs photons through multiple inputs and outputs and binds all the fibers together" by researchers also use "auxiliary photons" that can interact with other such particles.

As a result, "intelligent selection of certain models of interference" essentially allows the transfer of quantum information from one photon to another without the two physical interactions, with Erhard pointing out that this experimental concept can be extended to any number of dimensions.

As Phys.org points out, this achievement marks an "important step" toward creating hands-on applications such as the "future quantum Internet," because three...