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Hyper-Entangled Photons — 'Superdense' Coding Gets Denser

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the so-tangling-is-a-good-thing dept.

ScienceDaily is reporting that researchers at the University of Illinois have broken the record for most information sent via a single photon using the direction of "wiggling" and "twisting" a pair of entangled photons. "Using linear elements, however, the standard protocol is fundamentally limited to convey only one of three messages, or 1.58 bits. The new experiment surpasses that threshold by employing pairs of photons entangled in more ways than one (hyper-entangled). As a result, additional information can be sent and correctly decoded to achieve the full power of dense coding."

7 of 72 comments (clear)

  1. Nothing new here by schklerg · · Score: 5, Funny

    Sorry about this, but... People have been getting entangled by "wiggling" and "twisting" for a long time now.

    --
    Be Excellent To Each Other
  2. Hyperentagled Students by Galaga88 · · Score: 5, Funny

    I work in a college library and I can vouch that pairs of students who get hyperentangled in the study rooms or on one of our couches certainly seem to be capable of carrying much less information than non-entangled students.

    1. Re:Hyperentagled Students by blair1q · · Score: 5, Funny

      The entangled ones are exchanging terabits of information. Of course, only the sum of 26 chromosomes - and only half of those from each source, will be persistent, and then only if neither has employed a firewall. But the resulting code will be a self-replicating automaton, which will eventually grow to occupy all of its parent objects' manageable resources.

      Let's see a couple of photons do that.

  3. Just reverse it already! by torchdragon · · Score: 4, Funny

    "They then encode a message in the polarization state by applying birefringent phase shifts with a pair of liquid crystals." Just say you reversed the polarity! We've been waiting to hear it for decades now. Just come out and say it already! Enough of the cock teasing. This is science damn it, I want my compensator. I want to flux my capacitors!

    --
    "Don't feel bad for me child; I'm the monster that hides under your bed."
  4. Re:superdense alright by blueg3 · · Score: 5, Informative

    They just mean that their objects can encode one of three states. The amount of information, in "bits", a state encodes is log2(number of possible states), and log2(3) ~= 1.58. By the same token, a single decimal digit stores 3.32 bits.

  5. thanks ;-) by circletimessquare · · Score: 5, Funny

    THAT i understood ;-)

    now i only have have 36 more questions before i completely understand the story summary... :-P

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    intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
  6. ugh... by slew · · Score: 4, Informative

    First off, isn't this rehashed news from 2005?

    Secondly, why did they have to change the word polarization to "wiggling"? As if lay people didn't know the word polarized from experience with their sunglasses.

    Perhaps I'll concede that calling orbital angular momentum to "twisting" may be a reasonable twisting of the terminology, although in earlier papers they refer to "spiraling" or "cork-screw" which seems like a much better scientific-speak-transliteration to me...