Quantum teleportation has moved a step closer to practical use after researchers demonstrated that it can transmit quantum information far more efficiently than direct photon transmission.
The experiments showed that the teleportation approach was nearly three times more efficient than direct photon transmission.
Quantum communication uses photons, the particles of light, to carry quantum information.
Efficient quantum transfer To overcome this limitation, the researchers turned to quantum teleportation.
According to the research team, the work suggests quantum teleportation could become a practical tool for future quantum communication systems.
Quantum teleportation has moved a step closer to practical use after researchers demonstrated that it can transmit quantum information far more efficiently than direct photon transmission. The study was carried out by a research team at China’s University of Science and Technology. The experiments showed that the teleportation approach was nearly three times more efficient than direct photon transmission. It also outperformed the conventional method when it was enhanced using optimal quantum cloning.
According to the researchers, the findings could help overcome photon loss over long distances, which is considered one of the biggest obstacles facing practical quantum communication networks. Quantum communication uses photons, the particles of light, to carry quantum information. As these photons travel through optical fibers or free space, many are scattered or absorbed. This photon loss becomes more severe over longer distances. It makes reliable quantum communication particularly difficult. Efficient quantum transfer To overcome this limitation, the researchers turned to quantum teleportation. The process transfers the quantum state of one particle to another through quantum entanglement without physically moving the particle itself. Quantum entanglement is a phenomenon in which two or more particles become connected. Measuring one instantly determines the state of the other, regardless of the distance between them.
“In quantum information science, we have reached a stage where a central goal is no longer simply to demonstrate fascinating quantum effects, but to show that quantum technologies can outperform the best classical alternatives in well-defined tasks,” Chaoyang Lu, PhD, a physics researcher and study co-author told Phys.org. Scientists have spent over four decades studying quantum teleportation. However until now, they had not directly compared quantum teleportation with sending photons through the same communication channel. The Chinese team has now created an all-optical scheme that remotely prepares high-quality entangled photon pairs. This allows teleportation to proceed even when communication channels suffer significant photon loss. A better approach The team’s method produces six photons, measures four of them, and then uses the measurements to create an entangled Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) pair in the remaining two photons. The entangled pair largely avoids transmission losses, which improves teleportation reliability.
To test the method, the team used a carefully calibrated communication channel with only about one percent transmission. They evaluated both the efficiency and fidelity of the teleported quantum states and compared the results. Quantum teleportation reached nearly three times higher transmission efficiency than sending photons directly through the same lossy channel. It marked the first evidence that teleportation can outperform direct photon transmission. According to the research team, the work suggests quantum teleportation could become a practical tool for future quantum communication systems. “Showing a teleportation advantage under realistic network conditions would be an important next step toward practical applications,” Lu continued. The researchers believe the method could support the development of quantum relays, quantum repeaters, and interconnected quantum processors. They plan to test it over real optical-fiber links and quantum networks.
They also aim to expand the method to prepare more complex entangled states, such as Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) states. “These resources could enable more powerful protocols in quantum networks and help demonstrate genuine quantum advantages in communication, distributed computing and networked quantum information processing,” Lu concluded. The study has been published in the journal Nature Physics.
