Scientist claim they achieved a massive breakthrough in teleportation by beaming data between quantum computers.
Researchers at the University of Oxford successfully teleported logical gates – the basic components of a computer algorithm – between two quantum processors separated by more than six feet.
Using particles of light (or photons), the scientists were able to form a shared quantum link between the two separate devices.
This allowed two processors to work remotely, sharing the same algorithm to complete their computing tasks.
The breakthrough may solve the ‘scalability problem’ that has plagued the construction of usable quantum computers.
Currently, however, a single computer capable of processing millions of qubits would need to be gigantic in size – making them impossible for most people to have.
Qubits (or quantum bits) replace the traditional bits of a standard computer.
The new breakthrough changes all that, allowing scientists to move data between a series of smaller devices – instead of building one enormous machine.
The team explains that any quantum device powerful enough to be a game-changing innovation in computer science would need to be able to process millions of qubits.
Dougal Main and Beth Nichol working on the distributed quantum computer.
While traditional bits store and transfer data in the form of zeros and ones, qubits utilize quantum physics to exist in both states at the same time.
This is why quantum devices could one day revolutionize the computer industry, as they can dramatically increase a computer’s processing speed.
This isn’t the first time scientists have successfully achieved quantum teleportation.
Previous international teams have demonstrated how teleportation could transfer data from one location to another without moving qubits.
In late 2023, scientists were even able to teleport an image using light – without physically sending the image itself.
However, the Oxford team says this is the first instance of quantum gates (the base level components of algorithms) being teleported over long distances.
Unlike a traditional logic gate, which manipulates information from regular bits carrying zeros and ones, quantum gates operate based on the data coming from qubits.
Quantum gates allow quantum computers to perform their calculations in parallel, thanks to superposition – the ability for qubits to exist as both a zero or one simultaneously.
This is what makes quantum computing so powerful for certain tasks, like cryptography, optimization, and searching large datasets.
Oxford’s Dougal Main said: ‘Previous demonstrations of quantum teleportation have focused on transferring quantum states between physically separated systems.’
‘In our study, we use quantum teleportation to create interactions between these distant systems,’ the lead study author continues.
Teleportation could help solve the problem of scaling down a quantum computer into a size that would be practical to use.
Currently, a quantum computer that could process millions of qubits would need to be incredibly large, which is why your smartphone still uses traditional computer technology.
Main adds that the breakthrough could lay the foundation for ‘quantum internet,’ where distant processors form an ultra-secure network for communication and data processing that would be completely safe from hacking.
‘By carefully tailoring these interactions, we can perform logical quantum gates – the fundamental operations of quantum computing – between qubits housed in separate quantum computers,’ Main explains.
‘This breakthrough enables us to effectively ‘wire together’ distinct quantum processors into a single, fully-connected quantum computer.’
After establishing a link between the devices, the team executed a Grover’s search algorithm, a well-known quantum algorithm used to search unsorted databases much faster than standard methods.
In this demonstration — the first of its kind using this kind of quantum system — the algorithm achieved a 71 percent success rate.
The results highlight the potential for quantum computing systems to function as a single entity even when their components are physically separated – a requirement for quantum internet.
Scientists in the US have also been feverishly working on a way to make quantum internet a reality.
In 2024, a team at Harvard was able to have qubits share their quantum ‘entanglement’ between distant locations.
Entanglement is the phenomenon where two particles, such as a pair of photons (light particles), remain intricately linked even when separated by large distances.
This allows them to share information without having to travel physically.
In 2024, physicists from Harvard University conducted the first real-world test of quantum internet’s potential in Boston.
In this study, published in Nature, the Oxford researchers used two separate quantum modules, each containing trapped-ion qubits.
These qubits were divided into two categories: network qubits (which handle communication) and circuit qubits (in charge of computer calculations).
The key innovation was linking the modules through photons, which created a shared quantum state between the two systems.
Using quantum gate teleportation, the team was able to execute operations remotely, ensuring the two modules functioned as a single quantum processor.
Simply put, teleportation helped to link multiple smaller quantum devices together in order to produce the processing power of a much larger computer.
Importantly, Professor David Lucas says building a scalable quantum computer with today’s tech is possible thanks to teleportation.
‘Our experiment demonstrates that network-distributed quantum information processing is feasible with current technology,’ the project’s principal investigator said.
‘Scaling up quantum computers remains a formidable technical challenge that will likely require new physics insights as well as intensive engineering effort over the coming years.’
Despite its promise, the teleportation breakthrough is still a work in progress.
The study reveals that scientists teleported a quantum gate between two separate modules with an 86 percent accuracy rate.
While that’s still an impressive rate, it falls short of the fault-tolerant threshold required for practical quantum computing.
Scientists will need to improve this score to well over 99 percent before quantum technology could be reliable in a real-world setting.
