Scientists in Spain Just Got a Step Closer to Building a Practical Quantum Repeater
A quantum internet could play a key role in tying together many of the most promising applications for quantum technologies. The main impetus for quantum communication networks today is security, because a feature of messages encoded in quantum states is that reading them changes their content, alerting the receiver to any eavesdropping.
But being able to share quantum states over large distances has other promising applications as well. For a start, it could allow quantum computers in different locations to share data, creating distributed quantum computers much more powerful than their individual components.
It could also make it possible to create instantaneous links between large networks of quantum sensors or atomic clock s , to measure phenomena like gravitational waves in unprecedented resolution or provide ultra-precise timekeeping.
The big problem at the moment is that creating quantum connections over long distances is tough. Now though, researchers from the t he Institute of Photonic Sciences in Spain have demonstrated a new kind of quantum memory that could help build repeaters that can greatly extend the range of quantum networks.
