Quantum Teleportation
Quantum Teleportation
Quantum Teleportation
QUANTUM
TELEPORTATION
Presentation Abstract
Submitted by:
Raghav Ranjan
th
B. Tech‐ 7
Semester
Computer Science & Engineering
Section‐ B
Roll No. 0401013052
QUANTUM
TELEPORTATION
The science fiction dream of “beaming” of objects from place to place is
now reality‐at least for particles of light.
Author: Raghav Ranjan | 2
“energy” of some kind; in other cases, the replica The dice in this fable are behaving as if they
is made of atoms and molecules that were were quantum entangled particles. Each die on its
already present at the receiving station. own is random and fair, but its entangled partner
somehow always gives the correct matching
Quantum mechanics seems to make such a outcome. Such behavior has been demonstrated
teleportation scheme impossible in principle. and intensively studied with real entangled
Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle rules that one particles. In typical experiments, pairs of atoms,
cannot know both the precise position of an ions or photons stand in for the dice, and
object and its momentum at the same time. Thus, properties such as polarization stand in for the
one cannot perform a perfect scan of the object different faces of a die.
to be teleported; the location or velocity of every
atom and electron would be subject to errors. Consider the case of two photons whose
Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle also applies to polarizations are entangled to be random but
other pairs of quantities, making it impossible to identical. Beams of light and even individual
measure the exact, total quantum state of any photons consist of oscillations of electromagnetic
object with certainty. Yet such measurements fields, and polarization refers to the alignment of
would be necessary to obtain all the information the electric field oscillations [see illustration on
needed to describe the original exactly. next page]. Suppose that Alice has one of the
entangled photons and Bob has its partner. When
A team of physicists overturned this Alice measures her photon to see if it is
conventional wisdom in 1993, when they horizontally or vertically polarized, each outcome
discovered a way to use quantum mechanics itself has a 50 percent chance. Bob’s photon has the
for teleportation. The team—Charles H. Bennett same probabilities, but the entanglement ensures
of IBM; Gilles Brassard, Claude Crépeau and that he will get exactly the same result as Alice. As
Richard Josza of the University of Montreal; Asher soon as Alice gets the result “horizontal,” say, she
Peres of Technion–Israel Institute of Technology; knows that Bob’s photon will also be horizontally
and William K. Wootters of Williams College— polarized. Before Alice’s measurement the two
found that a peculiar but fundamental feature of photons do not have individual polarizations; the
quantum mechanics, entanglement, can be used entangled state specifies only that a
to circumvent the limitations imposed by measurement will find that the two polarizations
Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle without are equal.
violating it.
An amazing aspect of this process is that it
Entanglement doesn’t matter if Alice and Bob are far away from
each other; the process works so long as their
Suppose a friend who likes to dabble in
photons’ entanglement has been preserved. Even
physics and party tricks has brought you a
if Alice is on Alpha Centauri and Bob on Earth,
collection of pairs of dice. He lets you roll them
their results will agree when they compare them.
once, one pair at a time. You handle the first pair
In every case, it is as if Bob’s photon is magically
gingerly, and then finally, you roll the two dice
influenced by Alice’s distant measurement, and
and get double 3. You roll the next pair. Double 6.
vice versa.
The next: double 1. They always match.
Author: Raghav Ranjan | 3
UNPOLARIZED LIGHT consists of photons that are a quantum superposition of both beams. ach such photon
polarized in all irections (a). In polarized light the photons’ detected in one beam or the other, with probability
can be
electric-field
oscillations arrows) are all aligned. A calcite depending on the angle. Because probabilities are
crystal (b) splits a light beam in two, ending photons that are involved, we cannot easure the unknown polarization of a
polarized parallel with its axis into one beam and those that
single photon with certainty.
are perpendicular into the other. Intermediate angles go into
between the photons, the signals would have to
It might be wonder if we can explain the travel faster than the speed of light. Naturally,
entanglement by imagining that each particle many people have wondered if this effect could
carries within it some recorded instructions. be used to transmit information faster than the
Perhaps when we entangle the two particles, we speed of light.
synchronize some hidden mechanism within them
that determines what results they will give when Unfortunately, the quantum rules make that
they are measured. This would explain away the impossible. Each local measurement on a photon,
mysterious effect of Alice’s measurement on considered in isolation, produces a completely
Bob’s particle. In the 1960s, however, Irish random result and so can carry no information
physicist John Bell proved a theorem that in from the distant location. It tells you nothing
certain situations any such “hidden variables” more than what the distant measurement result
explanation of quantum entanglement would probabilities would be, depending on what was
have to produce results different from those measured there. Nevertheless, we can put
predicted by standard quantum mechanics. entanglement to work in an ingenious way to
Experiments have confirmed the predictions of achieve quantum teleportation.
quantum mechanics to a very high accuracy.
Putting Entangles Photons to Work
Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger, one of
the co‐inventors of quantum mechanics, called Alice and Bob anticipate that they will want
entanglement “the essential feature” of quantum to teleport a photon in the future. In preparation,
physics. Entanglement is often called the EPR they share an entangled auxiliary pair of photons,
effect and the particles EPR pairs, after Einstein, Alice taking photon A and Bob photon B. Instead
Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen, who in 1935 of measuring them, they each store their photon
analyzed the effects of entanglement acting without disturbing the delicate entangled state
across large distances. Einstein talked of it as [see illustration on next page].
“spooky action at a distance.” If one tried to
explain the results in terms of signals traveling
Author: Raghav Ranjan | 4
ENTANGLED PHOTON PAIRS are created when a laser intersections (green), neither photon has a definite
beam passes through a crystal such as beta barium borate. polarization, but their relative polarizations are
The crystal occasionally converts a single ultraviolet photon complementary; they are then entangled. Colorized
into two photons of lower energy, one polarized vertically (on image (at right) is a photograph of down-converted
red cone), one polarized horizontally (on blue cone). If the
light. Colors do not represent the color of the light.
photons happen to travel along the cone
In due course, Alice has a third photon—call
it photon X—that she wants to teleport to Bob.
She does not know what photon X’s state is, but
she wants Bob to have a photon with that same
polarization. She cannot simply measure the
photon’s polarization and send Bob the result. In
general, her measurement result would not be
identical to the photon’s original state. This is
Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle at work.
Instead, to teleport photon X, Alice measures
it jointly with photon A, without determining their
individual polarizations. She might find, for
instance, that their polarizations are
IDEAL QUANTUM TELEPORTATION relies on Alice, “perpendicular” to each other (she still does not
the sender, and Bob, the receiver, sharing a pair of know the absolute polarization of either one,
entangled particles A and B (green). Alice has a particle
that is in an unknown quantum state X (blue). Alice
however). Technically, the joint measurement of
performs a Bell-state measurement on particles A and X, photon A and photon X is called a Bell‐state
producing one of four possible outcomes. She tells Bob
about the result by ordinary means. Depending on Alice’s
measurement. Alice’s measurement produces a
result, Bob leaves his particle unaltered (1) or rotates it (2, subtle effect: it changes Bob’s photon to correlate
3, 4). Either way it ends up a perfect replica of the original
particle X.
with a combination of her measurement result
and the state that photon X originally had. In fact,
Author: Raghav Ranjan | 5
Bob’s photon now carries her photon X’s state, classical information, consisting of two bits that
either exactly or modified in a simple way. can travel no faster than the speed of light.
To complete the teleportation, Alice must Skeptics might complain that the only thing
send a message to Bob—one that travels by teleported is the photon’s polarization state or,
conventional means, such as a telephone call or a more generally, its quantum state, not the photon
note on a scrap of paper. After he receives this “itself.” But because a photon’s quantum state is
message, if necessary Bob can transform his its defining characteristic, teleporting its state is
photon B, with the end result that it becomes an completely equivalent to teleporting the particle.
exact replica of the original photon X. Which
transformation Bob must apply depends on the Note that quantum teleportation does not
outcome of Alice’s measurement. There are four result in two copies of photon X. Classical
possibilities, corresponding to four quantum information can be copied any number of times,
relations between her photons A and X. A typical but perfect copying of quantum information is
transformation that Bob must apply to his photon impossible, a result known as the no‐cloning
is to alter its polarization by 90 degrees, which he theorem, which was proved by Wootters and
can do by sending it through a crystal with the Wojciech H. Zurek of Los Alamos National
appropriate optical properties. Laboratory in 1982. (If we could clone a quantum
state, we could use the clones to violate
Which of the four possible results Alice Heisenberg’s principle.) Alice’s measurement
obtains is completely random and independent of actually entangles her photon A with photon X,
photon X’s original state. Bob therefore does not and photon X loses all memory, one might say, of
know how to process his photon until he learns its original state. As a member of an entangled
the result of Alice’s measurement. One can say pair, it has no individual polarization state. Thus,
that Bob’s photon instantaneously contains all the the original state of photon X disappears from
information from Alice’s original, transported Alice’s domain.
there by quantum mechanics. Yet to know how to
read that information, Bob must wait for the
Author: Raghav Ranjan | 6
Circumventing Heisenberg
Author: Raghav Ranjan | 7
INNSBRUCK EXPERIMENT begins
with a short pulse of ultraviolet laser
light. Traveling left to right through a
crystal, this pulse produces the
of photons A and B,
entangled pair
which travel to Alice and Bob,
respectively.
Reflected back through
the crystal, the pulse creates two more
photons, C and D. A polarizer
photon D in a specific state,
prepares
X. Photon C is detected, confirming
that photon
X has been sent to Alice.
Alice combines photons A and X with
a beam splitter [see illustration on next
page]. If she detects one photon in
each detector (as occurs at most 25
percent of the time), she notifies Bob,
who uses a polarizing beam splitter to
verify that his photon has acquired
X’s polarization, thus demonstrating
successful teleportation.
Author: Raghav Ranjan | 8
BEAM SPLITTER, or semi reflecting mirror (a), reflects half the light that hits it and transmits the other half. An
individual photon has a 50–50 chance of reflection or transmission. If two identical photons strike the beam splitter at
the same
time, one from each side (b), the reflected and transmitted parts interfere, and the photons lose their
individual identities. We will detect one photon in each detector 25 percent of the time, and it is then impossible to say if
both photons were reflected or both were transmitted. Only the relative property—that they went to different
detectors—is measured.
this, Alice combines her two photons (A and X)
is available to be teleported. Photon D passes using a semi reflecting mirror, a device that
through a polarizer, which we can orient in any reflects half of the incident light. An individual
conceivable way. The resulting polarized photon photon has a 50–50 chance of passing through
is our photon X, the one to be teleported, and or being reflected. In quantum terms, the
travels on to Alice. Once it passes through the photon goes into a superposition of these two
polarizer, X is an independent photon, no longer possibilities [see illustration above].
entangled. And although we know its
polarization because of how we set the Now suppose that two photons strike the
polarizer, Alice does not. We reuse the same mirror from opposite sides, with their paths
ultraviolet pulse in this way to ensure that Alice aligned so that the reflected path of one photon
has photons A and X at the same time. lies along the transmitted path of the other, and
vice versa. A detector waits at the end of each
Now we arrive at the problem of path. Ordinarily the two photons would be
performing the Bell‐state measurement. To do reflected independently, and there would be a
Author: Raghav Ranjan | 9
50 percent chance of them arriving in separate very precise, and by Heisenberg’s uncertainty
detectors. If the photons are indistinguishable relation it smears out the photons in time.
and arrive at the mirror at the same instant,
however, quantum interference takes place: A mind‐boggling case arises when the
some possibilities cancel out and do not occur, teleported photon was itself entangled with
whereas others reinforce and occur more often. another and thus did not have its own
When the photons interfere, they have only a individual polarization. In 1998 my Innsbruck
25 percent likelihood of ending up in separate group demonstrated this scenario by giving
detectors. Furthermore, when that occurs it Alice photon D without polarizing it, so that it
corresponds to detecting one of the four was still entangled with photon C. We showed
possible Bell states of the two photons—the that when the teleportation succeeded, Bob’s
case that we called “lucky” earlier. The other 75 photon B ended up entangled with C. Thus, the
percent of the time the two photons both end entanglement with C had been transmitted
up in one detector, which corresponds to the from A to B.
other three Bell states but does not
Bell state measurements
discriminate among them.
Here we shall prepare pairs of entangled
When Alice simultaneously detects one
photons with opposite polarizations; we shall
photon in each detector, Bob’s photon instantly
call them E1 and E2. The entanglement means
becomes a replica of Alice’s original photon X.
that if we measure a beam of, say, E1 photons
We verified that this teleportation occurred by
with a polarizer, one‐half of the incident
showing that Bob’s photon had the polarization
photons will pass the filter, regardless of the
that we imposed on photon X. The experiment
orientation of the polarizer. Whether a
was not perfect, but the correct polarization
particular photon will pass the filter is random.
was detected 80 percent of the time (random
However, if we measure its companion E2
photons would achieve 50 percent). We
photon with a polarizer oriented at 90 degrees
demonstrated the procedure with a variety of
relative to the first, then if E1 passes its filter E2
polarizations: vertical, horizontal, linear at 45
will also pass its filter. Similarly if E1 does not
degrees and even a nonlinear kind of
pass its filter its companion E2 will not.
polarization called circular polarization.
We had half‐silvered mirrors, which reflect
The most difficult aspect of the Bell state
one‐half of the light incidents on them and
analyzer is making photons A and X
transmit the other half without reflection.
indistinguishable. Even the timing of when the
These mirrors are sometimes called beam
photons arrive could be used to identify which
splitters because they split a light beam into
photon is which, so it is important to “erase”
two equal parts.
the time information carried by the particles. In
the experiment, team used a clever trick first We shall use a half‐silvered mirror to
suggested by Marek Zukowski of the University perform Bell State Measurements. The name is
of Gdansk: they sent the photons through very after the originator of Bell's Theorem.
narrow bandwidth wavelength filters. This
process makes the wavelength of the photons We direct one of the entangled photons,
say E1, to the beam splitter. But sometimes one photon will end up
going upwards and the other will be going
Meanwhile, we prepare another photon downwards, as shown. This will occur when
with a polarization of 450, and direct it to the either both photons have been reflected or
same beam splitter from the other side, as both photons have been transmitted.
shown. This is the photon whose properties will
be transported; we label it K. We time it so that Thus there are three possible
both E1 and K reach the beam splitter at the arrangements for the photons from the beam
same time. splitter: both upwards, both downwards, or one
upwards and one downwards.
Which of these three possibilities has
occurred can be determined if we put detectors
in the paths of the photons after they have left
the beam splitter.
However, in the case of one photon going
upwards and the other going downwards, we
cannot tell which is which. Perhaps both
photons were reflected by the beam splitter,
but perhaps both were transmitted.
The E1 photon incident from above will be
This means that the two photons have
reflected by the beam splitter some of the time
become entangled.
and will be transmitted some of the time.
Similarly for the K photon that is incident from If we have a large beam of identically
below. So sometimes both photons will end up prepared photon pairs incident on the beam
going up and to the right as shown. splitter, the case of one photon ending up going
upwards and the other downwards occurs,
Similarly, sometimes both photons will end
perhaps surprisingly, 25% of the time.
up going down and to the right.
Also somewhat surprisingly, for a single
pair of photons incident on the beam splitter,
the photon E1 has now collapsed into a state
where its polarization is ‐450, the opposite
polarization of the prepared 450 one. This is
because the photons have become entangled.
So although we don't know which photon is
which, we know the polarizations of both of
them.
Author: Raghav Ranjan | 11
shifts the light experiences when reflected, the Note that the teleportation has destroyed
mixture of polarization states of E1, and the the state of the original K photon.
consequent interference between the two
photons. Quantum entanglements such as exist
between E1 and E2 in principle are independent
of how far apart the two photons become. This
has been experimentally verified for distances
as large as 10km. Thus, the Quantum
Teleportation is similarly independent of the
distance.
The Teleporter
Now we shall think about the E2
companion to E1.
Author: Raghav Ranjan | 12
we would know the polarization state of both Quantum Cryptography
photons for both of those angles.
Cryptography depends on both the sender
As we saw in our discussion of Bell's and receiver of the encrypted information both
Theorem, the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle knowing a key. The sender uses the key to
says that this is impossible: we can never know encrypt the information and the receiver uses
the polarization of a photon for these two the same key to decrypt it.
angles. Thus any teleporter must destroy the
state of the object being teleported. The key can be something very simple,
such as both parties knowing that each letter
APPLICATIONS has been shifted up by 13 places, with letters
above the thirteenth in the alphabet rotated to
Quantum Information the beginning. Or they can be very complex,
such as a very very long string of binary digits.
As you probably know, computers store
information as sequences of 0's and 1's. For Here is an example of using binary
example, in the ASCII encoding the letter A is numbers to encrypt and decrypt a message, in
represented by the number 65. As a binary this case the letter A, which we have seen is
number this is: 1,000,001 in a binary ASCII encoding. We shall
use as the key the number 23, which in binary is
1,000,001
0,010,111. We will use the key to encode the
Inside the computer, there are transistors letter using a rule that if the corresponding bits
that are either on or off, and we assign the on‐ of the letter and key are the same, the result is
state be 1 and the off state 0. However, the a 1, and otherwise a 0.
same information can be stored in exactly the
same way in any system that has two mutually
exclusive binary states.
A
For example, if we have a collection 1 0 0 0 0 0 1
photons we could represent the 1's as photons
whose polarization is +450 and the 0's as Key
polarizations of ‐450. We could similarly use 0 0 1 0 1 1 1
electrons with spin‐up and spin‐down states to
encode the information. These quantum bits of Encrypted
information are called qubits. 0 1 0 1 0 0 1
Author: Raghav Ranjan | 13
both the 0 degree state and 45 degree state,
Encrypted since the first measurement destroys the
0 1 0 1 0 0 1
information of the second one, regardless of
which one is performed first.
Key
0 0 1 0 1 1 1
The receiver measures the incoming
photons, randomly choosing whether to
A measure at 90 degrees or 45 degrees, and
1 0 0 0 0 0 1
records the results but keeps them secret. The
receiver contacts the sender and tells her on an
Any classical encryption scheme is
open channel which type of measurement was
vulnerable on two counts:
done for each, without revealing the result. The
If the "bad guys" get hold of the key they sender tells the receiver which of the
too can decrypt the message. So‐called public measurements were of the correct type. Both
key encryption schemes reveals on an open the sender and receiver keep only the qubits
channel a long string of binary digits which must that were measured correctly and they have
be converted to the key by means of a secret now formed the key.
procedure; here security is based on the
If the bad guys intercept the transmission
computational complexity of "cracking" the
of photons, measure their polarizations, and
secret procedure.
then send them on to the receiver, they will
Because there are patterns in all messages, inevitably introduce errors because they don't
such as the fact that the letter e predominates, know which polarization measurement to
then if multiple messages are intercepted using perform. The two legitimate users of the
the same key the bad guys can begin to quantum channel test for eavesdropping by
decipher them. revealing a random subset of the key bits and
checking the error rate on an open channel.
To be really secure, then, there must be a Although they cannot prevent eavesdropping,
unique secret key for each message. So the they will never be fooled by an eavesdropper
question becomes how can we generate a because any, however subtle and sophisticated,
unique key and be sure that the bad guys don't effort to tap the channel will be detected.
know what it is. Whenever they are not happy with the security
To send a key in Quantum Cryptography, of the channel they can try to set up the key
simply send photons in one of four distribution again.
polarizations: ‐45, 0, 45, or 90 degrees. As you By February 2000 a working Quantum
know, the receiver can measure, say, whether Cryptography system using the above scheme
or not a photon is polarized at 90 degrees and if achieved the admittedly modest rates of 10 bits
it is not then be sure than it was polarized at 0 per second over a 30 cm length.
degrees. Similarly the receiver can measure
whether a photon was polarized at 45 degrees, There is another method of Quantum
and if it is not then it is surely polarized at ‐45 Cryptography which uses entangled photons. A
degrees. However the receiver cannot measure sequence of correlated particle pairs is
Author: Raghav Ranjan | 14
generated, with one member of each pair being [3] IBM Research on Quantum Teleportation
detected by each party (for example, a pair of
photons whose polarizations are measured by [4] Research pages on Entanglement and
the parties). An eavesdropper on this Quantum Teleportation on web site:
communication would have to detect a particle www.physorg.com
to read the signal, and retransmit it in order for
his presence to remain unknown. However, the
act of detection of one particle of a pair
destroys its quantum correlation with the other,
and the two parties can easily verify whether
this has been done, without revealing the
results of their own measurements, by
communication over an open channel.
Conclusion
REFRENCES
[1] Scientific American. Vol 282
Author: Raghav Ranjan | 15