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Quantum Teleportation Achieved over Record Distances

Two teams of researchers have extended the reach of quantum teleportation to unprecedented lengths, roughly equivalent to the distance between New York City and Philadelphia.

But don’t expect teleportation stations to replace airports or train terminals—the teleportation scheme shifts only the quantum state of a single photon. And although part of the transfer happens instantaneously, the steps required to read out the teleported quantum state ensure that no information can be communicated faster than the speed of light.

Quantum teleportation relies on the phenomenon of entanglement, through which quantum particles share a fragile, invisible link across space. Two entangled photons, for instance, can have correlated, opposite polarization states—if one photon is vertically polarized, for instance, the other must be horizontally polarized. But, thanks to the intricacies of quantum mechanics, each photon’s specific polarization remains undecided until one of them is measured. At that instant the other photon’s polarization snaps into its opposing orientation, even if many kilometers have come between the entangled pair.

An entangled photon pair serves as the intermediary in the standard teleportation scheme. Say Alice wants to teleport the quantum state of a photon to Bob. First she takes one member of a pair of entangled photons, and Bob takes the other. Then Alice lets her entangled photon interfere with the photon to be teleported and performs a polarization measurement whose outcome depends on the quantum state of both of her particles.

Because of the link between Alice and Bob forged by entanglement, Bob’s photon instantly feels the effect of the measurement made by Alice. Bob’s photon assumes the quantum state of Alice’s original photon, but in a sort of garbled form. Bob cannot recover the quantum state Alice wanted to teleport until he reverses that garbling by tweaking his photon in a way that depends on the outcome of Alice’s measurement. So he must await word from Alice about how to complete the teleportation—and that word cannot travel faster than the speed of light. That restriction ensures that teleported information obeys the cosmic speed limit.

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