- Title: AUSTRIA: TELEPORTATION EXPERIMENTS WITH PHOTONS
- Date: 8th January 1998
- Summary: INNSBRUCK, AUSTRIA (JANUARY 8, 1998) (RTV) 1. GV PAN CITY SKYLINE WITH ALPS IN THE DISTANCE 0.10 2. LV UNIVERITY OF INNSBRUCK CAMPUS 0.16 3. SLV STUDENT ENTERING UNIVERSITY BUILDING 0.24 4. SC NOTICEBOARD INSTITUTE FOR EXPERIMENTAL PHYSICS 0.29 5. SCU RESEARCHERS IN LABORATORY 0.37 6. SCU/CU PROFESSOR ANTON ZEILINGER IN LABORATORY WITH RESEARCH STAFF (2 SHOTS) 0.48 7. SLV OPTICAL EQUIPMENT BENCH 0.54 8. CU INSTRUMENTS ON OPTICAL EQUIPMENT BENCH 0.59 9. CU BEAMSPLITTER 1.03 10. SCU COVER OF "NATURE" MAGAZINE 1.08 11. CU ARTICLE ON EXPERIMENT 1.11 12. SCU RESEARCHER, DOCTOR HARALD WEINFURTHER ON THE TEAM SAYING "WE TRIED TO TELEPORT A QUANTUM STATE OF A SINGLE PHOTON ONTO ANOTHER PHOTON. SO THAT MEANS WE TELEPORT QUANTUM PROPERTIES OF PARTICLES (ENGLISH) 1.25 13. SCU CHINESE SCIENTIST DEMONSTRATES PHASES OF EXPERIMENT, FOLLOWING THE PATH OF LASER BEAMS WITH A FILTER PAPER. SAYS "HERE WE HAVE A PAIR OF BEAMS, THEN IT PASSES THROUGH HERE, THROUGH A CRYSTAL, HERE WE ProDUCE ONE OF THE ENTANGLED PAIRS. ONE PHOTON GOES THIS WAY AND THE OTHER GOES THIS WAY" (Shows PATH ON MACHINERY)/"AND THEN IT GOES THIS WAY AND GRADUALLY PASSES THROUGH THIS BEAMSPLITTER, SO WE HAVE TWO PHOTON CURRENTS, WHICH MEANS WE ALREADY TELEPORT THE POLARISATION STATE OF THIS PHOTON TO THIS SIDE" (HE POINTS) (ENGLISH) 14. WIDE OF A WHITE BOARD WITH EXPERIMENT FORMULA / CUTAWAY OF BOARD (4 SHOTS) 2.21 15. CU PHOTOGRAPH OF PROFESSOR ANTON ZEILINGER, TEAM LEADER / MEDIUM VIEW ShowING PHOTOGRAPH ON DOOR TO PROFESSOR'S OFFICE (2 SHOTS) 2.30 16. SLV STUDENT WALKING THROUGH HALLWAY 2.34 17. SLV ZOOM IN ZEILINGER SEATED WITH REPORTER: QUESTION "COULD YOU PLEASE EXPLAIN TO US WHAT YOU HAVE DONE BECAUSE THIS ALL SouNDS LIKE SCIENCE FICTION TO MOST PEOPLE". PROFESSOR ANSWERING "WHAT WE DID, THAT IS A GROUP OF SIX PEOPLE AT MY INSTITUTE, IS WE TELEPORTED THE QUANTUM STATE OF A PHOTON. THE PHOTON IS THE MOST SIMPLE ELEMENTARY PARTICLE YOU CAN THINK OF, WHICH IS WHAT LIGHT IS MADE OF" (ENGLISH) ZOOM INTO MID-SHOT, ANSWER CONTINUES: "SO WHAT WE DID IS WE HAD ONE PHOTON PREPARED IN A CERTAIN STATE WITH WELL DEFINED PROPERTIES AND IN THE EXPERIMENT IN THE END, THIS PHOTON HAD TO DISAPPEAR AND ANOTHER PHOTON OVER THERE TURNED OUT TO BE AN EXACT REPLICA OF THE ORiginaL" (ENGLISH) QUESTION: "CAN THEN TELEPORTATION LATER BE USED FOR SENDING SOLID MATERIAL OR EVEN PEOPLE LIKE CAPTAIN KIRK FROM STAR TREK FROM ONE POINT TO THE OTHER?" ANSWER: WELL THE POINT IS, AT FIRST YOU DON'T REALLY SEND MATERIAL THAT WAY. WHAT YOU DO IS YOU PREPARE WHAT YOU WANT TO TELEPORT IN A VERY STRANGE STATE, IN A SO-CALLED ENTANGLED STATE. SO YOU HAVE TO HAVE THE MATERIAL ALREADY THERE IN THESE VERY STRANGE PROPERTIES. AND THEN BY DOING THE EXPERIMENT, YOU MAKE SURE THAT THIS MATERIAL IN A SENSE IS ARRANGED IN SUCH A WAY THAT IT IS AN IDENTICAL REPLICA OF THE OriginAL. AND TO TALK ABOUT LARGER OBJECTS, THE TECHNOLOGY IS BASICALLY AROUND TO DO THE SAME EXPERIMENT WITH ATOMS, THAT SHOULD BE POSSIBLE WITHIN A FEW YEARS; WITH SMALL MOLECULES IT SHOULD POSSIBLE WITHIN TEN YEARS OR MAYBE TWENTY YEARS, SOMETHING LIKE THIS. FOR LARGE OBJECTS IT'S ANYBODY'S GUESS. FOR LIVING SYSTEMS, WE DON'T EVEN KNOW WHETHER THE QUESTION IS A REASONABLE ONE. IN OTHER WORDS, NOBODY HAS SEEN A QUANTUM STATE OF A LIVING OBJECT YET. THAT IS A VERY INTERESTING, CHALLENGING QUESTION TO WHICH NOBODY KNOWS THE ANSWER" (ENGLISH) 4.42 18. CU SLIDE ShowING PHOTON POLARIZATION; SLIDE ShowING TELEPORTATION CHART; DIAGRAM OF EXPERIMENT TILT (3 SHOTS) 5.01 19. SCU PROFESSOR SEATED AT TABLE, QUESTION OFF CameRA: "WHAT DO YOU THINK ALBERT EINSTEIN WOULD SAY TODAY IF HE SAW THIS" ANSWER: "WELL I WOULD GIVE A LOT TO KNOW HIS OPINION, BECAUSE HE WOULD CERTAINLY HAVE BEEN FORCED, I GUESS, TO ACCEPT QUANTUM MECHANICS THE WAY IT IS, AND ALSO THE REALLY MIND-BOGGLING CONSEQUENCES" (ENGLISH) 5.22 20. CU PAN OF BLUE LASER BEAM TRANSFER (2 SHOTS) 5.41 21. MV ONE OF RESEARCHERS DEMONSTRATES THE PATH OF LASER BEAM WITH LIQUID NITROGENE (TO MAKE THE BEAM PATH VISIBLE FOR CameRA), SAYING: "THEN IT GOES ONTO THIS PHOTON WHICH TRAVELS HERE ALONE AND IS ANALYSED IN THIS DETECTOR STATION HERE" (ENGLISH) (3 SHOTS) 6.11 22. CU INSTRUMENTS ON PHOTO-OPTIC BENCH 6.15 23. SLV PHOTO-OPTIC BENCH 6.23 Initials S3 P3 Script is copyright Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.
- Embargoed: 23rd January 1998 12:00
- Keywords:
- Location: INNSBRUCK, AUSTRIA
- City:
- Country: Austria
- Reuters ID: LVAZC09ISE1CADPRH0RTHINWOV2
- Story Text: - INTRO: For the first time, scientists have demonstrated a form of teleportation, the dream of science fiction writers, in a laboratory experiment.
A team of seven international scientists working at the University in Innsbruck in Austria have caused particles of light, known as photons, to vanish and reappear at another point in the laboratory.
Albert Einstein dismissed it as "spooky", Star Trek made it science fiction, but Austrian scientists now claim teleportation is a reality.
The dream of teleportation is to be able to travel by vanishing and reappearing instantly at some distant lOCAtion -- such as for Captain Kirk to be beamed from the Enterprise to the surface of an alien planet.
But neither human beings nor any other living things are being beamed up by the teleportation team at the Institute for Experimental Physics in the Alp winter resort of Innsbruck.
Using an optical equipment bench, and relying on peculiarities of quantum mechanics, the Innsbruck team teleported the so-called quantum state of a photon, a single-particle of light invisible to the eye and the most simple elementary particle on earth, to another photon instantly and without any connection or communication between the two.
"We had one photon prepared with well-defined properties. In the experiment, this photon had to disappear and another photon a metre (three feet) away turned out to be an exact replica of the original," said Anton Zeilinger, professor of experimental physics and head of the six-member team.
The experiment, reported in the December issue of the science magazine Nature, may one day lead to quantum super computers which would process information such as this article quicker than the speed of light.
It may also herald an totally secure way of sending and receiving information.
The article reported the latest findings "opened the possibility of quantum memories, where the information of incoming photons is stored on trapped ions, carefully shielded from the environment".
Zeilinger's workplace is a large "Photo-optic" steel table with a myriad of wires, digital displays and lasers sending thousands of photons through a labyrinth of lenses and beam splitters into detectors which keep track of the experiments.
Quantum mechanics theory dictates that objects such as single particles do not have a specific structure or property -- only a set of probabilities -- until measured.
In Zeilinger's experiment the quantum state, or physical condition, of one photon was linked to that of another by a complicated process called entanglement.
Because the pair of photons was of the same origin, measuring one of them would instantly prompt the other to form the opposite oscillation pattern.
Light is the oscillation of an electric field. It can oscillate right-left, up and down, in a circular or elliptical way and so on.
"The two photons are undefined. If you measure one and you find that it oscillates up and down, the other one from that moment on instantly has to oscillate right-left. There is no communication, no information being carried," Zeilinger said.
"There is no way to understand it. It just happens. To me it is one of the unexplainable primary qualities of quantum mechanics. It is really mind-boggling. It is really beyond the grasp of normal intuition." The Innsbruck experiment was done in a laboratory, "but in principle you could do it from one corner of the galaxy to the other," Zeilinger said.
In the 1930s Albert Einstein dismissed this aspect of quantum mechanics as "spooky action from a distance" because it suggested something could travel faster than the speed of light -- violating the laws of physics.
"What Einstein said basically is that the world cannot be that strange," Zeilinger explained. "We now know that he was wrong. We now know that the world really is that strange. I would give a lot to know what he would have said if he had seen this kind of experiment. He would, I guess, have to accept quantum mechanics the way it is, and also the really mind-boggling concequences." Zeilinger said he watched Star Trek sometimes with his sons, but that the movie had been no inspiration for his research.
The basic theory of quantum teleportation was outlined in 1993 by IBM physicist Charles Bennett and his colleagues.
Zeilinger's group claims to have turned theory into practice.
An Italian team based in Rome is involved in similar experiments and French scientists in Paris are doing related research.
"The technology is basically around to do the same experiment with atoms within a few years and with small molecules it should be possible within 10 or 20 years," Zeilinger said.
"For large objects, it is anybody's guess. For living things we don't even know if the question is reasonable. large."Noone has yet seen a quantum state of a living object yet. That is a very interesting question to which nobody knows the answer", he added.
The next step is to create a cluster of entangled particles in which superpositions of information could be stored. A computer bit is either zero or one. A quantum bit could be in the superposition of zero and one, be both at the same time.
"A quantum computer would be completely different from today's electronic computers. But nobody can say how long it will take or if we will be able to build one. A quantum computer is such a far-out project that we don't even know what it would be good for," Zeilinger said.
"All we know that it would be infinitely faster than anything existing."
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