Physicists at The Australian National University (ANU) and University of Queensland (UQ) have produced near-perfect clones of quantum information using a new method to surpass previous cloning limits.
A global race is on to use quantum physics for ultra-secure encryption over long distances according to Prof Ping Koy Lam, node director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Quantum Computation and Communication Technology (CQC2T) at ANU.
The new cloning method uses high performance optical amplifiers to clone light encoded with quantum information—it is possible this technique could allow quantum encryption to be implemented with existing fibre optic infrastructure.
"One obstacle to sending quantum information is that the quantum state degrades before reaching its destination. Our cloner has many possible applications, and could help overcome this problem to achieve secure long distance communication," said Prof Lam.
The laws of physics—in particular the 'No Cloning Theorem'—prevent high quality clones being produced with a 100 percent success rate. The team, led by Prof Lam, uses a probabilistic method to demonstrate that it's possible to produce clones that exceed theoretical quality limits. The method was initially proposed by CQC2T researchers led by Prof Timothy Ralph at UQ.
"Imagine Olympic archers being able to choose the shots that land closest to the target's centre to increase their average score," said Prof Ralph.
"By designing our experiment to have probabilistic outputs, we sometimes 'get lucky' and recover more information than is possible using existing deterministic cloning methods. We use the results closest to a 'bullseye' and discard the rest," he said.
Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2016-10-precise-quantum-cloning-pathway.html#jCp
Δεν υπάρχουν σχόλια:
Δημοσίευση σχολίου