Chinese team teleported photons through 100 kilometres of free space, opening the way for satellite-based quantum

communications

Teleportation is the extraordinary ability to transfer objects from one location to another without travelling through the intervening space. The idea is not that the physical object is teleported but the information that describes it. This can then be applied to a similar object in a new location which effectively takes on the new identity. And it is by no means science fiction. Physicists have been teleporting photons since 1997 and the technique is now standard in optics laboratories all over the world. The phenomenon that makes this possible is known as quantum entanglement, the deep and mysterious link that occurs when two quantum objects share the same existence and yet are separated in space. Teleportation turns out to be extremely useful. Because teleported information does not travel through the intervening space, it cannot be secretly accessed by an eavesdropper. For that reason, teleportation is the enabling technology behind quantum cryptography, a way of sending information with close-to-perfect secrecy. Unfortunately, entangled photons are fragile objects. They cannot travel further than a kilometre or so down optical fibres because the photons end up interacting with the glass breaking the entanglement. That severely limits quantum cryptographys usefulness. However, physicists have had more success teleporting photons through the atmosphere. In 2010, a Chinese team announced that it had teleported single photons over a distance of 16 kilometres. Handy but not exactly Earth-shattering. Now the same team says it has smashed this record. Juan Yin at the University of Science and Technology of China in Shanghai, and a bunch of mates say they have teleported entangled photons over a distance of 97 kilometres across a lake in China.

Quantum Imaging Technique Heralds Unjammable Aircraft Detection

Physicists have exploited the quantum properties of photons to create the first imaging system that is unjammable. Jamming radar signals is an increasingly sophisticated affair. There are various techniques such as drowning the radar frequency with noise or dropping chaff to create a false reflection. But the most advanced radar systems can get around these ruses. So a more sophisticated idea is to intercept the radar signal and modify it in a way that gives false information about the target before sending it back. Thats much harder to outsmart. Mehul Malik and pals at the University of Rochester in New York state demonstrate a way to do it.

These guys base their technique on the quantum properties of photons and in particular on the fact that any attempt to measure a photon always destroys its quantum properties.
So their idea is to use polarised photons to detect and image objects. Reflected photons can of course be used to build up an image of the object. But an adversary could intercept these photons and resend them in a way that disguises the objects shape or makes it look as if it is elsewhere. However, such a process would always change the quantum properties of the photons such as their polarisation. And so it should always be possible to detect such interference. In order to jam our imaging system, the object must disturb the delicate quantum state of the imaging photons, thus introducing statistical errors that reveal its activity, say Malik and co. Thats more or less exactly how quantum key distribution for cryptography works. The idea here is that any eavesdropper would change the quantum properties of the key and so reveal his or her presence. The only difference in the quantum imaging scenario is that the message is sent and received by the same person. Malik and co have tested their idea by bouncing photons off an aeroplane-shaped target and measuring the polarisation error rate in the return signal. Without any eavesdropping the system easily imaged the aeroplane. But when an adversary intercepted the photons and modified them to send back an image of a bird, the interference was easy to spot, say Malik and co. Thats not to say the technique is perfect. It suffers from the same limitations that plague early quantum cryptographic syst ems, which are theoretically secure but crackable in practice.

Is the Universe computable ?

One of the driving forces in modern science is the idea that the Universe computes the future, taking some initial state as an input and generating future states as an output. This is a powerful approach that has produced much insight. Some scientists go as far as to say that the Universe is a giant computer. Is this a reasonable assumption? Today, Ken Wharton at San Jose State University in California, makes an important argument that it is not. His fear is that the idea of the universe as a computer is worryingly anthropocentric. Its basically the assumption that the way we humans solve physics problems must be the way the universe actually operates, he says. Whats more, the idea has spread through science without any proper consideration of its validity or any examination of the alternatives. This assumptionis so strong that many physicists cant even articulate what other type of universe might be conceptually possible, says Wharton. He argues that a close look at the notion of the cosmos as a computer reveals important problems. Wharton examines several. For example, a computation involves three steps. First, the physical world has to be mapped onto some mathematical state. Next, this state mathematically evolves into a new state. And finally, the new state is mapped back onto the physical world. In quantum mechanics, this can only happen if this final step is probabilistic. As Wharton puts it: Not even the universe knows which particular outcome will occur. And yet, when the universe is measured, a specific outcome does occur. The operation of a computer cannot account for this. For Wharton, this is a crucial flaw that most physicists just overlook. Its also an important clue that idea of the universe is a computer is merely an assumption and one that has never been rigorously questioned. It is the least-questioned (and most fundamental) assumptions that have the greatest potential to lead us astray, he says. To demonstrate the point, Wharton spends a significant part of his paper explaining an alternative view of the cosmos which does not rely on traditional computation. This is Lagranges formulation of the laws of physics based on the principle of least action. An example is the principle that light travels the shortest distance between two points. Lagranges method is essentially to stipulate the start point and end point, examine all possible paths and choose the shortest. In this view, the reason light bends at an air/water interface is not because of any algorithm-like chain of cause-and-eect, but rather because its globally more ecient, explains Wharton. Anybody familiar with this approach will know its great elegance and beauty. But critics ask how the light ray can know its end point when it starts its journey. Wharton says these critics argue like this: Yes, *Lagranges method+ may be beautiful, it may be powerful, but its not how our universe really works. Its just a useful trick weve discovered.

In 2011, Lytro demonstrated capability to produce a camera that allows users to change the focus of a picture after the picture is taken