A team of physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology has ‘teleported’ quantum data carried in light particles over 63 miles (102 km) of optical fiber, four times farther than the previous record.

The new record involved the transfer of data contained in one photon to another photon transmitted over 102 km of spooled fiber in a National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) laboratory in Boulder, Colorado.

The experiment confirmed that quantum communication is feasible over long distances in fiber.

Other teams have teleported quantum information over longer distances in free space, but the ability to do so over conventional fiber-optic lines offers more flexibility for network design.

The achievement was made possible by highly efficient nanowire single-photon detectors designed and made at NIST. The detectors rely on superconducting nanowires made of molybdenum silicide. They can record more than 80% of arriving photons, revealing whether they are in the same or different time slots each just 1 nanosecond long.

“Only about 1% of photons make it all the way through 63 miles of fiber. We never could have done this experiment without these new detectors, which can measure this incredibly weak signal,” said Dr Marty Stevens of NIST, co-author of a paper published online in the journal Optica.

Not to be confused with Star Trek’s ‘beaming up’ of people, quantum teleportation involves the transfer, or remote reconstruction, of information encoded in quantum states of matter or light.

Teleportation is useful in both quantum communications and quantum computing, which offer prospects for new capabilities such as unbreakable encryption and advanced code-breaking, respectively.

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Hiroki Takesue et al. 2015. Quantum teleportation over 100 km of fiber using highly efficient superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors. Optica, vol. 2, no. 10, pp. 832 – 835; doi: 10.1364/optica.2.000832