Author: Emily Conover / Source: Science News
Communication is a two-way street. Thanks to quantum mechanics, that adage applies even if you’ve got only one particle to transmit messages with.
Using a single photon, or particle of light, two people can simultaneously send information to one another, scientists report in a new pair of papers. The feat relies on a quirk of quantum mechanics — superposition, the phenomenon through which particles can effectively occupy two places at once.
Sending information via quantum particles is a popular research subject, thanks to the promise of unhackable quantum communication (SN: 12/23/17, p. 27). The new studies specify a previously unidentified twist on that type of technique. “Sometimes you overlook a cool idea, and then it’s just literally right in front of your nose,” says University of Vienna experimental physicist Philip Walther.
Theoretical physicists Flavio Del Santo of the University of Vienna and Borivoje Dakić from the Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information of the Austrian Academy of Sciences describe the theory behind the procedure in the Feb. 9 Physical Review Letters. Walther, Del Santo, Dakić and colleagues follow up with a demonstration of the technique…
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