Quantum teleportation on a chip

The core circuits of quantum teleportation, which generate and detect quantum entanglement, have been successfully integrated into a photonic chip by an international team of scientists from the universities of Bristol, Tokyo, Southampton and NTT Device Technology Laboratories. These results pave the way to developing ultra-high-speed quantum computers and strengthening the security of communication. Qubits (quantum bits) are sensitive quantum versions of today's computer 0's and 1's (bits) and are the foundation of quantum computers. Photons are particles of light and they are a promising way to implement excellent qubits. One of the most important tasks is to successfully enable quantum teleportation , which transfers qubits from one photon to another. However, the conventional experimental implementation of quantum teleportation fills a laboratory and requires hundreds of optical instruments painstakingly aligned, a far cry from the scale and robustness of device required in a modern day computer or handheld device. In 2013, Professor Furusawa and his colleagues succeeded in realising perfect quantum teleportation, however, this required a set-up covering several square metres; took many months to build, and reached the limit in terms of scalability.