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takyon [soylentnews.org] writes:

Two teams have separately achieved quantum teleportation over existing fiber networks [bbc.com]:

[The] set-ups described in studies published in Nature Photonics journal [nature.com] could be seen as building blocks for a future "quantum internet". In one of the papers [nature.com] [DOI: 10.1038/nphoton.2016.180] [DX [doi.org]], Dr Wolfgang Tittel and colleagues describe how they teleported the quantum state of a photon, or light particle, over 8.2km in the Canadian city of Calgary.

The process by which information - the quantum state of a photon - is teleported involves creating two photons at the University of Calgary (site B in the aerial photo). One of these photons is sent in a "classical" way along 11.1km of optical fibre to a building near Calgary City Hall (C in the photo), while the other remains behind at the university. Meanwhile, a photon is also sent to the City Hall site from site A (located in the neighbourhood of Manchester). This all results in the quantum state of the photon from site A being transferred to the photon which remained behind at the university (B) through quantum teleportation.

[...] In the other Nature Photonics study [nature.com] [DOI: 10.1038/nphoton.2016.179] [DX [doi.org]], Qiang Zhang and Jian-Wei Pan from the University of Science and Technology of China, Shanghai, used a different set-up to achieve teleportation over a 30km optical fibre network in the Chinese city of Hefei.

In 2012, Anton Zeilinger of the University of Vienna carried out quantum teleportation over 143km of free space between different Canary Islands. But Dr Tittel says his study uses a configuration that could serve as the benchmark for useful city-based quantum networks. Both studies demonstrate that teleportation works over several kilometres of the optical fibre used in metropolitan areas.

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