Northwestern University engineers are the first to successfully demonstrate quantum teleportation over a fiber optic cable already carrying Internet traffic.
Advance opens door for secure quantum applications without specialized infrastructure
So they’ve shown they can send light over a cable designed to transfer light.
The impressive thing is of course managing to get one specific photon to one specific location. Still, what benefits does that have over the standard encoding?
I guess this technique might have a lower error rate and higher distance, because it’s binary by nature with no quantization needed. But you don’t need the quantum entanglement part at all for this.
Edit:
Reading is hard! This is indeed exciting for security. I wonder how it fairs against a very powerful MitM though.
It’s physically impossible to intercept an entangled photon without disrupting the entanglement. The act of observing the photon collapses the quantum uncertainty of it’s state, so even the most sophisticated MitM attempt is going to immediately break the link.
But can you detect the link being broken by someone other than your intended communication partner?
If A sends a particle to B, couldn’t M intercept A’s particle and send a different particle to B? Kind of like intercepting Diffie Hellman. A and B will both share some information with M, but not with each other.
So they’ve shown they can send light over a cable designed to transfer light.
The impressive thing is of course managing to get one specific photon to one specific location. Still, what benefits does that have over the standard encoding?
I guess this technique might have a lower error rate and higher distance, because it’s binary by nature with no quantization needed. But you don’t need the quantum entanglement part at all for this.
Edit: Reading is hard! This is indeed exciting for security. I wonder how it fairs against a very powerful MitM though.
It’s physically impossible to intercept an entangled photon without disrupting the entanglement. The act of observing the photon collapses the quantum uncertainty of it’s state, so even the most sophisticated MitM attempt is going to immediately break the link.
But can you detect the link being broken by someone other than your intended communication partner?
If A sends a particle to B, couldn’t M intercept A’s particle and send a different particle to B? Kind of like intercepting Diffie Hellman. A and B will both share some information with M, but not with each other.