BANGALORE, INDIA: Researchers have demonstrated that a crystal can store information encoded into entangled quantum states of photons.

Researchers at the University of Calgary, in Canada, collaborating with the University of Paderborn, in Germany, are working on a way to make quantum networks a reality and have published their findings in the journal 'Nature'. A similar finding by a group at the University of Geneva, in Switzerland is reported in the same issue.

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Wolfgang Tittel of the University of Calgary’s Institute for Quantum Information Science said that this discovery constitutes an important milestone on the path toward quantum networks, and will hopefully enable building quantum networks in a few years.

In current communication networks, information is sent through pulses of light moving through optical fibre. The information can be stored on computer hard disks for future use.

Quantum networks operate differently than the networks we use daily.

“What we have is similar but it does not use pulses of light,” adds Tittel, “In quantum communication, we also have to store and retrieve information. But in our case, the information is encoded into entangled states of photons.”

In this state, photons are “entangled,” and remain so even when they fly apart. In a way, they communicate with each other even when they are very far apart. The difficulty is getting them to stay put without breaking this fragile quantum link. Quantum networks will allow sending information without being afraid of somebody listening in.