http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,22048954-2,00.html
Scientists find way to teleport atoms on optic fibres
By Mark Schliebs
July 10, 2007 11:55am
AUSTRALIAN physicists have discovered a method
that could see atoms being teleported between
Sydney and Perth and pave the way for possible
Star Trek-like travel in the future.
The method involves cooling down a group of atoms
and shooting lasers at them, making them "appear
to disappear" before using transporting them
along optic fibres at light speed to another
location where they can be reconstructed.
The "simple" way of transporting atoms was
developed by physicists Murray Olsen, Ashton
Bradley, Simon Haine of the Australian Research
Council Centre for Quantum-Atom Optics, and and Joseph Hope of ANU.
Dr Olsen told NEWS.com.au the method was very
much like the Star Trek characters' favourite way to get back onto the ship.
The atoms are cooled to almost absolute zero, or
-273C. At a billionth of a degree above this
temperature, a quirk of physics makes all the
atoms start behaving in the same way. Then the
scientists zap them with two lasers.
If you cool these atoms down enough ... in a
condensate, they all enter the same quantum state, Dr Olsen said.
When a few thousand atoms are overlapping (and
you hit them with the laser beams)
they basically disappear.
We can use an optic fibre (to transport the
signal at the speed of light) into a second
condensate, which could be in another room, or
another building, or another state.
Weve got the coldest thing in the universe and
the fastest speed in the universe.
Experiments
He said the method could be being used in
laboratories in the next four years, but didn't
expect he would ever see humans teleported.
Dr Haine said the teams method was a lot simpler than previous theories.
Dr Haine also said their method would reconstruct
the atoms better once transported, compared to the entanglement theory.
As our scheme doesnt rely on the quality of the
entanglement, it may be possible to achieve more
accurate teleportation via this method, Dr Haine said.
Another scientist at ANU, Dr John Close, intends
to implement the experiments over the coming years.
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