http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/rnb_020904.asp?trk=nl
Technology Review
TOPIC > Computers and Electronics > Computers
?Electricity Teleportation Devised
Technology Research News February 9, 2004
Researchers from Leiden University in the Netherlands have devised a way to
teleport electricity.
Teleportation is possible at the atomic scale, and was discovered a decade
ago for photons in free space. The researchers' proposal works for
electrons contained in conductors, and could eventually be used within
computer circuits.
A major obstacle to quantum teleportation is that in a metal or
semiconductor electrons exist in a crowd, dubbed the Fermi sea, making
individual electrons difficult to isolate and manipulate.
When the two carriers of electrical current -- negatively charged electrons
and positively charged holes -- meet, they cancel each other out. The
researchers have postulated that an entangled electron, however, could
continue its existence at a distant location.
Entangled electrons are connected in such a way that specific properties of
the electrons remain synchronized regardless of the physical distance
between them.
The method could eventually be used to instantly transport information
between the quantum bits, or qubits, of a quantum computer if electrons
could be transported over distances of around 100 microns. Quantum
computers use the properties of particles like photons, electrons and atoms
to compute and are theoretically very fast at certain large problems,
including those that would render today's encryption-based security systems
obsolete.
Laboratory demonstrations showing that the method could be used to
transport electrons a few microns could happen within two to five years;
practical applications are a decade or two away, according to the
researchers. The work appeared in the December, 2003 issue of Physical
Review Letters.
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R. A. Hettinga