What is quantum teleportation Why cant we use it to communicate faster than light Physicist: Contrary to its exciting name,

quantum teleportation doesnt involve an y physical stuff suddenly disappearing and then reappearing somewhere else. Ins tead its a cute, clever, technique for transferring an unknown quantum state of o ne system (usually a single particle) to another, specially prepared, system. T hat sounds a lot cooler and more interesting than the reality. Before even gett ing into quantum teleportation, Ill describe how to do classical teleportation, and you can judge whether teleport is even the appropriate word. This is great at pa rties (or, more likely, Dr. Who marathons at your moms house)! Classical teleportation: i) Get three coins (hereafter called A, B , and C), and set up B and C to be the same side up (but which side is up should be completely random). ii) Flip A. iii) Compare A and B. If theyre the same, then leave C alone. If theyre differen t, then turn C over. iv) What was the heads/tails state of A is now the state of C. This was the result of a google search for "ugliest coin". Doesnt seem that bad . B and C start the same. If A and B are the same, then C and A are already the sa me. If A and B are different, then flipping C will make A and C the same. This works independently of the heads/tails configurations (as long as B and C start the same), so you dont even need to know what faces are up. Whats deeply spooky about this is that you can set it up so that the state of A i s transmitted to C, without ever knowing what the states of any of the coins are . In step one make B and C the same, then while holding them together, turn the m over several times until youve lost track of how many times youve done it, then cover them. Theyll be the same, but you wont know which side they both have up. Do the same sort of thing in step three: bring A and B together, turn them over several times, then see if theyre the same or different. Or just get someone else to do it for you. The teleportation comes in because you can move C as far away as you like. Once y ou compare A and B you can then shout (or, for a long distance teleport, call on the phone) same or different, and whoever has C can leave it alone or flip it over. The unknown state of A has been teleported to C. Notice that, until you tell Cs owner about the result of the same/different measurement, the state of C has a bsolutely nothing to do with the state of A. This is the big limitation of tele portation and why it isnt faster than light; you have to communicate the results of the measurement, and that communication is through ordinary, not-faster-thanlight channels. Without that communication C remains random and has nothing to do with A. Whether or not this trick qualifies as remarkable, or even deserves the moniker t eleportation, is a matter of personal preference. That said, this brand of telep ortation can send physical objects from place to place exactly as effectively as an email can. Ever notice that the moment Riker is left in charge everything goes horribly wro ng? Quantum teleportation is not this. Not this at all.

Quantum teleportation has the same limitations and works very similarly. Answer gravy: And heres how. There are several teleportation schemes and, believ e it or not, this is the simplest. The basic idea is the same as the coin trick; you start with two particles, B an d C, that are entangled. Then you bring in particle A thats in an unknown state and compare it to B (in a way that doesnt involve directly measuring the states o f either). Then the results of that comparison are communicated, and C is alter ed. A qubit, is like a regular bit (or a coin), except that instead of just 0 or 1 (head s or tails) it can be in a combination of both. What is physically meant by 1 o r 0, or how a qubit is manipulated, depend on the system involved. It could be electron spins manipulated by magnets, or photon paths manipulated by beam split ters, or a dozen other things. Doesnt really matter. The notation here is a little tricky, but stay with me. In what follows |\cdot\, \cdot\,\cdot\rangle is the notation for a state of all three qubits. So, for exa mple, |101\rangle is the state A=1, B=0, and C=1. In quantum mechanics things c an be in more than one state at once. For example, B and C will start in the en tangled state \frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}|00\rangle+\frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}|11\rangle, which m eans that theyre in a 50/50 combination of both zero and both one. That 2 is there because when you actually do a measurement, the probability of fi nding a particular state is the coefficient squared. This is called the Born Rul e, and dont worry about it. Those 2s are mostly just clutter. "Do stuff" is an extremely technical term. How to quantum teleport the state of A onto C. The initial state of all three qubits, I in the picture above, is: \begin{array}{ll}(\alpha|0\rangle+\beta|1\rangle)(\frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}|00\rangle+\ frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}|11\rangle) \\= \frac{\alpha}{\sqrt{2}}|000\rangle+\frac{\beta} {\sqrt{2}}|100\rangle+\frac{\alpha}{\sqrt{2}}|011\rangle+\frac{\beta}{\sqrt{2}}| 111\rangle\end{array} Where the state of A, \alpha|0\rangle+\beta|1\rangle, which is the state to be t eleported, is completely unknown ( and are unknown). The first thing thats done i s a Controlled Not Gate. An ordinary Not Gate flips the bit, |0\rangle\to|1\rangl e and |1\rangle\to|0\rangle. But a Controlled Not has a control bit and a target b it. If the control bit is 0, then nothing happens, and if the control bit is 1, then the target bit is flipped. In this case, A is the control bit and B is the target. This interaction makes the state of A and the state of B entangled. A fter the Controlled Not the state of the three qubits, II in the picture above, is : \frac{\alpha}{\sqrt{2}}|000\rangle+\frac{\beta}{\sqrt{2}}|110\rangle+\frac{\alph a}{\sqrt{2}}|011\rangle+\frac{\beta}{\sqrt{2}}|101\rangle Notice that after the CNot gate the qubits can no longer be factored apart, the way the state at I could be factored. This is symptomatic of entangled systems. Next comes the Hadamard Gate, which only exists for quantum systems. CNot gates can be done in a regular computer, but the Hadamard Gate is all quantum, baby. Heres what it does: |0\rangle\to\frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}|0\rangle-\frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}|1 \rangle and |1\rangle\to\frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}|0\rangle+\frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}|1\rangle. This step is hides what state A started out as, so when a measurement is done (in a moment) you dont measure directly measure A. This is important, because if you measure a state it collapses*. So instead of having \alpha|0\rangle+\beta|

1\rangle, youre left with just |0\rangle or just |1\rangle, which are different f rom A. After applying the Hadamard Gate to A, the state of the three qubits, III in the picture above, is: \frac{\alpha}{2}|000\rangle-\frac{\alpha}{2}|100\rangle+\frac{\beta}{2}|010\rang le+\frac{\beta}{2}|110\rangle+\frac{\alpha}{2}|011\rangle-\frac{\alpha}{2}|111\r angle+\frac{\beta}{2}|001\rangle+\frac{\beta}{2}|101\rangle This can be rearranged a bit, \frac{1}{2}|00\rangle(\alpha|0\rangle+\beta|1\rangle) + \frac{1}{2}|01\rangle(\b eta|0\rangle+\alpha|1\rangle) + \frac{1}{2}|10\rangle(-\alpha|0\rangle+\beta|1\r angle) + \frac{1}{2}|11\rangle(\beta|0\rangle-\alpha|1\rangle) Now when A and B are measured, they can have one of four possible results, 00, 0 1, 10, and 11. When a measurement is made, then what remains are all of those s tates consistent with the measurement. For example, if A is measured to be 1, t hen the state remaining is \frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}|10\rangle(-\alpha|0\rangle+\beta|1 \rangle) + \frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}|11\rangle(\beta|0\rangle-\alpha|1\rangle), and if B is then found to be 0, then the state remaining is |10\rangle(-\alpha|0\rangle +\beta|1\rangle). Each of the four results will mean that C is left in one of four states: \begin{array}{cc} \textrm{Result} & \textrm{State of C} \\ 00 & \alpha|0\rangle+ \beta|1\rangle \\ 01 & \beta|0\rangle+\alpha|1\rangle \\ 10 & -\alpha|0\rangle+\ beta|1\rangle \\ 11 & \beta|0\rangle-\alpha|1\rangle \end{array} If the person in charge of C (the Custodian?) is then told the results, no matte r how far away they are, they can perform some basic fixes. For example, if the result is 00, then they leave the state alone. If the result is 01, they run C through a Not gate (which switches 0 and 1). For the others a Phase Gate (anothe r quantum-only kind of logic gate) is used, which takes |0\rangle\to|0\rangle an d |1\rangle\to-|1\rangle. Heres the important bit. Just like the classical teleportation above, without know ledge of what the results of the AB measurement were, the person in charge of C (the Controller?) cant turn C into the original A state. If they were to measure C, without doing any of the fixes, theyd find that the probability of getting a zero or a one is exactly 50%, instead of ||2 and ||2 which it should be (again, by the Born rule). Each of the four measurements are equally likely, and the chan ce of getting a 1 is the sum of chances from each state: 0.25(||2+||2+||2+|-|2) = 0.25 (1+1) = 0.5 (since ||2+||2=1). You may suspect that thered be some way to manipulate C, without getting the resu lts of the measurement, that would allow you to overcome this lack of informatio n. Turns out: nope. Its much harder to see why, and it dips into quantum inform ation theory, but the proof is fairly straightforward. This is just for those of you who really feel like looking this stuff up, so itll be fast. The probability density matrix for C, before any information is received, is \left [\begin{array}{cc}\frac{1}{2}&0\\0&\frac{1}{2}\end{array}\right] or one half tim es the identity matrix (those halves are the 50/50 probabilities from a moment a go). You can figure this out by tracing out all of the unknown components (A and B). Everything that you can do to the state C, including all of the stuff menti oned earlier like Not gates, and Hadamard Gates, and whatnot, amounts to a coord inate change on the probability density matrix. But since its essentially just t he identity matrix, none of them change anything. The s and s of the original state never show up in C (not even a little) before the results of the measurement (0 0, 01, 10, or 11) are communicated.

So once again, without ordinary communication, nothing about A is conveyed to C, and if you only had access to C, youd never know that a measurement was even don e. *Not really. When quantum systems interact they become entangled. From inside of a system this looks like wave function collapse which causes no end of paradoxe s and problems, but from outside of the systems involved interactions dont cause collapses, just entanglement. source: http://www.askamathematician.com/2013/01/q-what-is-quantum-teleportation -why-cant-we-use-it-to-communicate-faster-than-light/