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QUANTUM
The science-fiction dream of beaming objects from place
to place is now a reality at least for particles of light
By Anton Zeilinger
T
he scene is a familiar one from science fiction and TV: cases, the material that made up the original is also transported
an intrepid band of explorers enters a special cham- to the receiving station, perhaps as energy of some kind; in oth-
ber; lights pulse, sound effects warble, and our heroes er cases, the replica is made of atoms and molecules that were
shimmer out of existence to reappear on the surface already present at the receiving station.
of a faraway planet. This is the dream of teleportationthe abil- Quantum mechanics seems to make such a teleportation
ity to travel from place to place without having to pass through scheme impossible in principle. Heisenbergs uncertainty princi-
the tedious intervening miles accompanied by a physical vehicle ple rules that one cannot know both the precise position of an
and airline-food rations. Although the teleportation of large ob- object and its momentum at the same time. Thus, one cannot per-
jects or humans still remains a fantasy, quantum teleportation form a perfect scan of the object to be teleported; the location or
has become a laboratory reality for photons, the individual par- velocity of every atom and electron would be subject to errors.
ticles of light. Heisenbergs uncertainty principle also applies to other pairs of
Quantum teleportation exploits some of the most basic (and quantities, making it impossible to measure the exact, total quan-
peculiar) features of quantum mechanics, a branch of physics in- tum state of any object with certainty. Yet such measurements
vented in the first quarter of the 20th century to explain processes would be necessary to obtain all the information needed to de-
that occur at the level of individual atoms. From the beginning, scribe the original exactly. (In Star Trek the Heisenberg Com-
theorists realized that quantum physics led to a plethora of new pensator somehow miraculously overcomes that difficulty.)
phenomena, some of which defy common sense. Technological A team of physicists overturned this conventional wisdom
progress in the final quarter of the 20th century enabled re- in 1993, when they discovered a theoretical way to use quan-
searchers to conduct many experiments that not only have tum mechanics itself for teleportation. The team Charles H.
demonstrated fundamental, sometimes bizarre aspects of quan- Bennett of IBM; Gilles Brassard, Claude Crpeau and Richard
tum mechanics but, as in the case of quantum teleportation, have Josza of the University of Montreal; Asher Peres of Tech-
applied them to achieve previously inconceivable feats. nionIsrael Institute of Technology; and William K. Wootters
In science-fiction stories, teleportation often permits travel of Williams Collegefound that a peculiar but fundamental fea-
that is instantaneous, violating the speed limit set down by Al- ture of quantum mechanics, entanglement, can be used to cir-
bert Einstein, who concluded from his theory of relativity that cumvent the limitations imposed by Heisenbergs uncertainty
nothing can travel faster than light. Teleportation is also less principle without violating it.
cumbersome than the more ordinary means of space travel. It
Entanglement
SPACE CHANNEL/PHILIP SAUNDERS
LAURIE GRACE
Calcite
Vertical crystal
polarizing filter
UNPOLARIZED LIGHT consists of photons polarized in all directions (a). into the other. Intermediate angles go into a quantum superposition of both
In polarized light the photons electric-field oscillations (arrows) are all beams. Each such photon can be detected in one beam or the other, with
aligned. A calcite crystal (b) splits a light beam, sending photons that are probability depending on the angle. Because probabilities are involved, we
polarized parallel with its axis into one beam and those that are perpendicular cannot measure the polarization of a single photon with certainty.
last Christmas. Finally, you roll the two entangled photons and Bob has its part- ton is magically influenced by Alices dis-
dice and get double 3. You roll the next ner. When Alice measures her photon to tant measurement, and vice versa.
pair. Double 6. The next: double 1. They see if it is horizontally or vertically polar- You might wonder if we can explain
always match. ized, each outcome has a 50 percent the entanglement by imagining that each
The dice in this fable are behaving as chance. Bobs photon has the same prob- particle carries within it some recorded in-
if they were quantum-entangled particles. abilities, but the entanglement ensures structions. Perhaps when we entangle the
Each die on its own is random and fair, that he will get exactly the same result as two particles, we synchronize some hidden
but its entangled partner somehow al- Alice. As soon as Alice gets the result mechanism within them that determines
ways gives the correct matching outcome. horizontal, say, she knows that Bobs what results they will give when they are
Such behavior has been demonstrated photon will also be horizontally polar- measured. This would explain away the
and intensively studied with real entan- ized. Before Alices measurement the two mysterious effect of Alices measurement
gled particles. In typical experiments, photons do not have individual polariza- on Bobs particle. In the 1960s, however,
pairs of atoms, ions or photons stand in tions; the entangled state specifies only Irish physicist John Bell proved a theorem
for the dice, and properties such as polar- that a measurement will find that the two that in certain situations any such hidden
ization stand in for their different faces. polarizations are equal. variables explanation of quantum en-
Consider the case of two photons An amazing aspect of this process is tanglement would have to produce results
whose polarizations are entangled to be that it doesnt matter if Alice and Bob are different from those predicted by standard
random but identical. Beams of light and far away from each other; the process quantum mechanics. Experiments have
even individual photons consist of oscil- works so long as their photons entangle- confirmed the predictions of quantum me-
lations of electromagnetic fields, and po- ment has been preserved. Even if Alice is chanics to a very high accuracy.
larization refers to the alignment of the on Alpha Centauri and Bob on Earth, Austrian physicist Erwin Schrdinger,
electric field oscillations [see illustration their results will agree when they compare one of the co-inventors of quantum me-
above]. Suppose that Alice has one of the them. In every case, it is as if Bobs pho- chanics, called entanglement the essen-
QUANTUM TELEPORTATION OF A PERSON (impossible in practice equal mass of auxiliary material ( green). The auxiliary matter
but a good example to aid the imagination) would begin with the has previously been quantum-entangled with its counterpart,
person inside a measurement chamber ( left) alongside an which is at the faraway receiving station ( right).
ENTANGLED PHOTON PAIRS are created when a laser beam passes through a happen to travel along the cone intersections (green), neither photon has a
crystal such as beta barium borate. The crystal occasionally converts a single definite polarization, but their relative polarizations are complementary;
ultraviolet photon into two photons of lower energy, one polarized vertically they are then entangled. Colorized image (at right) is a photograph of
(on red cone), one polarized horizontally (on blue cone). If the photons down-converted light. Colors do not represent the color of the light.
tial feature of quantum physics. Entan- surement on a photon, considered in iso- ing photon A and Bob photon B. Instead
glement is often called the EPR effect and lation, produces a completely random re- of measuring them, they each store their
the particles EPR pairs, after Einstein, sult and so can carry no information from photon without disturbing the delicate
Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen, who the distant location. It tells you nothing entangled state [see top illustration on
in 1935 analyzed the effects of entangle- more than what the distant measurement next page].
ment acting across large distances. Ein- result probabilities would be, depending In due course, Alice has a third pho-
stein talked of it as spooky action at a on what was measured there. Neverthe- toncall it photon Xthat she wants to
distance. If one tried to explain the re- less, we can put entanglement to work in teleport to Bob. She does not know what
sults in terms of signals traveling between an ingenious way to achieve quantum photon Xs state is, but she wants Bob to
the photons, the signals would have to teleportation. have a photon with that same polariza-
travel faster than the speed of light. Nat- tion state. She cannot simply measure the
urally, many people have wondered if this Teleporting Photons photons polarization and send Bob the
effect could be used to transmit informa- ALICE AND BOB anticipate that they result. In general, her measurement result
tion faster than the speed of light. will want to teleport a photon in the fu- would not be identical to the photons
Unfortunately, the quantum rules ture. In preparation, they share an entan- original state. This is Heisenbergs un-
make that impossible. Each local mea- gled auxiliary pair of photons, Alice tak- certainty principle at work.
JOINT MEASUREMENT carried out on the auxiliary matter and the bits per elementary state. By spooky action at a distance, the
person (left) changes them to a random quantum state and measurement also instantly alters the quantum state of the
produces a vast amount of random (but significant) data two faraway counterpart matter (right). MORE >>>
Entangled
X particle act replica of the original photon X. sult known as the no-cloning theorem,
source Which transformation Bob must apply which was proved in 1982 by Wootters
depends on the outcome of Alices mea- and Wojciech H. Zurek of Los Alamos
IDEAL QUANTUM TELEPORTATION relies on Alice, surement. There are four possibilities, National Laboratory. (If we could clone
the sender, and Bob, the receiver, sharing a pair corresponding to four quantum relations a quantum state, we could use the clones
of entangled particles A and B. Alice has a between her photons A and X. A typical to violate Heisenbergs principle.) Alices
particle that is in an unknown quantum state X. transformation that Bob must apply to measurement actually entangles her pho-
Alice performs a Bell-state measurement on
particles A and X, producing one of four possible his photon is to alter its polarization by ton A with photon X, and photon X los-
outcomes. She tells Bob about the result by 90 degrees, which he can do by sending it es all memory, one might say, of its orig-
ordinary means. Depending on Alices result, Bob through a crystal with the appropriate inal state. As a member of an entangled
leaves his particle unaltered (1) or rotates it (2, optical properties. pair, it has no individual polarization
3, 4). Either way it ends up a replica of particle X. Which of the four possible results Al- state. Thus, the original state of photon X
ice obtains is completely random and in- disappears from Alices domain.
Instead, to teleport photon X, Alice dependent of photon Xs original state.
measures it jointly with photon A, with- Bob therefore does not know how to pro- Circumventing Heisenberg
out determining their individual polar- cess his photon until he learns the result FURTHERMORE, photon Xs state has
izations. She might find, for instance, that of Alices measurement. One can say that been transferred to Bob with neither Al-
their polarizations are perpendicular to Bobs photon instantaneously contains all ice nor Bob learning anything about what
each other (she still does not know the ab- the information from Alices original, the state is. Alices measurement result,
solute polarization of either one, howev- transported there by quantum mechanics. being random, tells them nothing about
er). Technically, the joint measurement Yet to know how to read that informa- the state. This is how the process circum-
entangles photon A and photon X and is tion, Bob must wait for the classical in- vents Heisenbergs principle, which stops
called a Bell-state measurement. Alices formation, consisting of two bits that can us from determining the complete quan-
MEASUREMENT DATA must be sent to the distant receiving speed of light, making it impossible to teleport the person
station by conventional means. This process is limited by the faster than the speed of light.
LAURIE GRACE
ca of Alices original. It might seem as if
information has traveled instantly from
Alice to Bob, beating Einsteins speed
limit. Yet this strange feature cannot be
INNSBRUCK EXPERIMENT begins with a short pulse of ultraviolet laser light. Traveling left to right
used to send information, because Bob
through a crystal, this pulse produces the entangled pair of photons A and B, which travel to Alice and
has no way of knowing that his photon Bob. Reflected back through the crystal, the pulse creates two more photons, C and D. A polarizer
is already an identical replica. Only when prepares photon D in a specific state, X. Photon C is detected, confirming that photon X has been sent
he learns the result of Alices Bell-state to Alice. Alice combines photons A and X with a beam splitter. If she detects one photon in each
measurement, transmitted to him via detector (as occurs at most 25 percent of the time), she notifies Bob, who uses a polarizing beam
splitter to verify that his photon has acquired Xs polarization, thus demonstrating teleportation.
classical means, can he exploit the infor-
mation in the teleported quantum state. It would seem that the theoretical pro- ametric down-conversion: a single pho-
If he tries to guess in which cases tele- posal described above laid out a clear ton passing through a special crystal
portation was instantly successful, he will blueprint for building a teleporter; on the sometimes generates two new photons
be wrong 75 percent of the time, and he contrary, it presented a great experimen- that are entangled so that they will show
will not know which guesses are correct. tal challenge. Producing entangled pairs opposite polarization when measured.
If he uses the photons based on such of photons has become routine in physics A much more difficult problem is to
guesses, the results will be the same as experiments in the past decade, but car- entangle two independent photons that
they would had he taken a beam of pho- rying out a Bell-state measurement on already exist, as must occur during the
tons with random polarizations. Thus, two independent photons had never been operation of a Bell-state analyzer. This
Einsteins relativity prevails; even the done before. means that the two photons (A and X)
spooky instantaneous action at a dis- somehow have to lose their private fea-
tance of quantum mechanics fails to send Building a Teleporter tures. In 1997 my group (Dik Bouw-
usable information faster than the speed A POWERFUL WAY to produce entan- meester, Jian-Wei Pan, Klaus Mattle,
of light. gled pairs of photons is spontaneous par- Manfred Eibl and Harald Weinfurter),
RECEIVER RE-CREATES THE TRAVELER, exact down to the counterpart matters state according to the random
quantum state of every atom and molecule, by adjusting the measurement data sent from the scanning station.
then at the University of Innsbruck, ap- out and do not occur, whereas others re- ceeded, Bobs photon B ended up entan-
plied a solution to this problem in our inforce and occur more often. When the gled with C. The entanglement with C
teleportation experiment [see top illustra- photons interfere, they have only a 25 had been transmitted from D to B.
tion on preceding page]. percent likelihood of ending up in sepa- My current group at the University of
In our experiment, a brief pulse of ul- rate detectors. Furthermore, that outcome Vienna was able to perform teleportation
traviolet light from a laser passes through corresponds to detecting one of the four of entanglement in such high fidelity that
a crystal and creates the entangled pho- possible Bell states of the two photons the nonlocal correlation between photons
tons A and B. One travels to Alice, and the the case that we called lucky earlier. The B and C violated a Bell inequality. The
other goes to Bob. A mirror reflects the ul- other 75 percent of the time the two pho- quality was high enough to make quan-
traviolet pulse back through the crystal tons both end up in one detector, which tum repeaters possible, necessary to con-
again, where it may create another pair of corresponds to the other three Bell states nect quantum computers over large dis-
photons, C and D. (These will also be en- but does not discriminate among them. tances. Shortly thereafter we overcame a
tangled, but we dont use their entangle- When Alice simultaneously detects limitation of our initial experiment. Ear-
ment.) Photon C goes to a detector, which one photon in each detector, Bobs pho- lier Bob had to actually detect and so de-
alerts us that its partner, D, is available to ton instantly becomes a replica of Alices stroy his photon X to make sure that tele-
be teleported. Photon D passes through original photon X. We verified that this portation succeeded. Our experiment
a polarizer, which we can orient in any teleportation occurred by showing that provided a freely propagating beam of
conceivable way. The resulting polarized Bobs photon had the polarization that teleported qubits emerging from Bobs
photon is our photon X, the one to be we imposed on photon X. Our experi- side, thus showing that this step is not es-
teleported, which travels on to Alice. ment was not perfect, but the correct po- sential. This is important in a case where
Once it passes through the polarizer, X is larization was detected 80 percent of the the qubits will be used again in some way.
an independent photon, no longer entan- time (random photons would achieve 50
gled. And although we know its polariza- percent). We demonstrated the procedure Piggyback States
tion because of how we set the polarizer, with a variety of polarizations: vertical, O U R E X P E R I M E N T clearly demonstrat-
Alice does not. We reuse the same ultra- horizontal, linear at 45 degrees and even ed teleportation, but it had a low rate of
violet pulse in this way to ensure that Al- a nonlinear, circular polarization. success. Because we could identify just
ice has photons A and X at the same time. The most difficult aspect of our Bell- one Bell state, we could teleport Alices
Now we arrive at the problem of per- state analyzer is making photons A and X photon only 25 percent of the time the
forming the Bell-state measurement. To indistinguishable. Even the timing of occasions when that state occurred. No
do this, Alice combines her two photons when the photons arrive could be used to complete Bell-state analyzer exists for in-
(A and X) using a semireflecting mirror, a identify which photon is which, so it is dependent photons or for any two inde-
device that reflects half the incident light. important to erase the time informa- pendently created quantum particles, so
An individual photon has a 5050 chance tion carried by the particles. In our ex- at present there is no experimentally
of passing through or being reflected. In periment, we used a clever trick first sug- proven way to improve our schemes effi-
quantum terms, the photon goes into a gested by Marek Zukowski of the Uni- ciency to 100 percent.
superposition of these two possibilities. versity of Gdansk in Poland: we send the In 1994 a way to circumvent this
Now suppose that two photons strike photons through very narrow bandwidth
the mirror from opposite sides, with their wavelength filters. This process makes the ANTON ZEILINGER (anton.zeilinger@
THE AUTHOR
paths aligned so that the reflected path of wavelength of the photons extremely pre- quantum.at) is at the Institute for Exper-
one photon lies along the transmitted path cise, and by Heisenbergs uncertainty re- imental Physics at the University of Vi-
of the other, and vice versa. A detector lation it smears out the photons in time. enna, having teleported there in 1999
waits at the end of each path. Ordinarily A mind-boggling case arises when the from the University of Innsbruck. He con-
the two photons would be reflected inde- teleported photon is itself entangled with siders himself very fortunate to have the
pendently, and there would be a 50 per- another and thus does not have its own privilege of working on exactly the mys-
cent chance of them arriving in separate polarization. In 1998 my Innsbruck group teries and paradoxes of quantum me-
detectors. If the photons are indistin- demonstrated this scenario by giving Al- chanics that drew him into physics near-
guishable and arrive at the mirror at the ice photon D without polarizing it, so that ly 40 years ago. In his little free time,
same instant, however, quantum interfer- it was still entangled with photon C. We Zeilinger interacts with classical music
ence takes place: some possibilities cancel showed that when the teleportation suc- and with jazz and loves to ski.
Intrepid explorer Alice discovers stable einsteinium crystals. Her competitor, the evil Zelda,
also discovers the crystals. But Alice and her partner Bob (on Earth) have one advantage:
QUANTUM COMPUTERS AND TELEPORTERS. Alice does some quantum data processing ...
... and teleports the output qubits of Alice sends a message to Bob by laser beam, telling him
datato Bob. They are very lucky: the his qubits have accurate data. Zelda laser beams her
teleportation succeeds cleanly! partner, Yuri, about the crystals.
Before the laser beam arrives on Bob gets Alices message Yuri gets Zeldas message
Earth, Bob feeds his qubits into a that his qubits were accu- but can only now start his
quantum simulation of the economy. rate replicas of hers! computer simulation. DUSAN PETRICIC
Bob invests his and Alices nest egg in einsteinium but they only had to get lucky once to strike it
futures ahead of the crowd. Their success depend- rich. Yuri and Zelda change to careers in the non-
ed on luck, one chance in four per qubit ... quantum service industry. THE END
It is valid only if we talk about that spe- Entanglement: The Greatest Mystery in Physics. Amir D. Aczel. Four Walls Eight Windows,
cific experiment, and we should be cau- New York, 2002.
tious when using it in other situations. More about quantum teleportation is available at www.quantum.at