This image shows crystals which contain photonic information after the teleportation. Image: © GAP, University of Geneva (UNIGE)

Physicists at the University of Geneva have succeeded in teleporting the quantum state of a photon to a crystal over more than 25 kilometres of optical fibre.

The experiment, carried out in the laboratory of Professor Nicolas Gisin, smashes the previous long distance record of 6 kilometres achieved ten years ago by the same team.

Quantum teleportation involves moving small bits of data from one place to another. The information behaves more like an object than normal information

Teleporting a photon, essentially a particle of light, to a crystal shows that in quantum physics it is not the composition of a particle which is important but rather its state.

A particle can exist outside the differences which distinguish light from matter. Or, put another way, in quantum physics an item’s properties transcend physical properties.

Still this quantum weirdness, which in the past has been usually limited to several metres, is a long way from the transporter room in the Star Trek of movie and television fame.

The latest teleportation leap forward is reported in the journal Nature Photonics by Félix Bussières and his colleagues.

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