China plans 2016 satellite launch to test quantum teleportation

MIT Technology Review : Last year Chinese and European researchers made significant progress in quantum teleportation through the atmosphere by reaching a distance of 143 km . Quantum teleportation, or entanglement-assisted teleportation, is a process by which a qubit (the basic unit of quantum information) can be exactly transmitted from one location to another, without the qubit being transmitted through the intervening space. Now Jian-Wei Pan of the University of Science and Technology of China in Shanghai and his colleagues have demonstrated a proof-of-concept ability to detect single photons reflected off a satellite. They used a mirrored satellite orbiting at 400 km and a pair of telescopesâmdash;one to send millions of bunches of photons and the other to detect the reflected photonsâmdash;to simulate the ability to teleport and detect individual photons. The team claims to have used a German satellite that deorbited in 2010, so the experiment must have happened several years ago. The timing of the publication may have been delayed so the team could complete plans to launch a satellite in 2016 that will be equipped with quantum teleportation equipment. If the satellite works, it would be the first step in establishing space-based quantum communications technology.