Two steps closer to a quantum internet [News]
Alexander Hellemans · IEEE Spectrum · 2015
In theory, the counterintuitive workings of quantum mechanics can guarantee that digital communications are utterly immune to prying eyes. That theory has advanced quickly, but the practice is now catching up, thanks to two developments by one of the field's pioneers. University of Vienna physicist Anton Zeilinger and his team realized the first teleportation of photons in 1997. Not to be confused with the stock-in-trade of Star Trek's Montgomery Scott, teleportation is the instantaneous transfer of the properties of one particle to another distant one; it's key to perhaps the most unassailable version of quantum communications. In November, Zeilinger and his team reported that they'd taken the process two important steps further.