IN a victory for Star Trek fans, physicists have moved a step closer
to teleportation.
Two 鈥渆ntangled鈥� photons have a strange property: each 鈥渒nows鈥� what happens to
the other even when they have moved far apart. Earlier this year, this allowed
Italian researchers to teleport the quantum state of a photon by creating an
identical copy of it elsewhere
(This Week, 11 October, p 20).
But the team could only teleport a specially prepared quantum state. 鈥淭hey
had to prepare the quantum right on the spot,鈥� says Anton Zeilinger of the
University of Innsbruck in Austria.
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In this week鈥檚 Nature (vol 390, p 575), Zeilinger鈥檚 team claims to
have a more elegant technique. 鈥淭he quantum can come from anywhere,鈥� he says. He
adds that transporting an atom is 鈥渨ithin the reach of present technology鈥�.
