ORNL’s Joseph Lukens runs experiments in an optics lab. Credit: Jason Richards/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy
Scientists' increasing mastery of quantum mechanics is heralding a new age of innovation. Technologies that harness the power of nature's most minute scale show enormous potential across the scientific spectrum, from computers exponentially more powerful than today's leading systems, sensors capable of detecting elusive dark matter, and a virtually unhackable quantum internet.
Researchers at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Freedom Photonics and Purdue University have made strides toward a fully quantum internet by designing and demonstrating the first ever Bell state analyzer for frequency bin coding.
Their findings were published in Optica.
Before information can be sent over a quantum network, it must first be encoded into a quantum state. This information is contained in qubits, or the quantum version of classical computing "bits" used to store information, that become entangled, meaning they reside in a state in which they cannot be described independently of one another.
Entanglement between two qubits is considered maximized when the qubits are said to be in "Bell states."
Measuring these Bell states is critical to performing many of the protocols necessary to perform quantum communication and distribute entanglement across a quantum network. And while these measurements have been done for many years, the team's method represents the first Bell state analyzer developed specifically for frequency bin coding, a quantum communications method that harnesses single photons residing in two different frequencies simultaneously. READ MORE...
