Researchers from Texas, Riyadh announce revolutionary discovery
The discovery is "almost psychic" communication in which information can be exchanged between two parties without any physical particles or photons - tiny units of electromagnetic light - traveling between them, according to an article posted on the TAMU website.
The research could have major applications in the field of optical communication, particularly for communications security. In recent years, this field has made major improvements in allowing for the secure transfer of credit card information between consumer and vendor. With this new research, there simply wouldn't be any data to steal in the first place within the communication channel.
Zubairy, however, is careful not to make any claims about applicability of the discovery just yet.
"Right now, this is a new, beautiful idea," said Zubairy, a professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy and holder of the Munnerlyn-Heep Chair in Quantum Optics. "I'm looking at it like a painter or poet looks at art or poetry. Could there be (a) use? Yes, but our main goal right now is simply to understand the basic science first. Who knows what kinds of applications could be envisioned in the future?"
The team has proposed a new protocol for optical communication in which information is transferred while the probability of finding any photons in the channel between two parties, named for argument's sake "Alice and Bob" - is practically zero.
The basic setup works like this: A photon leaving Alice's station can, on Bob's end, have its polarization state switched or kept the same. In other words, Bob has the choice of either absorbing the bit of information or not absorbing it. Depending on what Bob chooses, different detectors are set off on Alice's end. So Alice can figure out Bob's choice by checking her own detectors. The counterintuitive result: A communication occurred between Alice and Bob, but the photon never left Alice's station.
"In technical terms, we call this 'counterfactual,'" Zubairy said. "It's been believed that if two parties want to communicate, something needs to be sent, and something is allowing for its passage. That's been an underlying assumption in every communications system. This is the first possible setup where that doesn't exist. That's what I mean by 'almost psychic.'"
Al-Amri said: "The concept of two parties communicating without exchanging particles is mind-boggling and highly counterintuitive. It raises interesting questions: How could Alice sense Bob's moves when her photon never left her station?"
Salih said: "The group's approach could be used to carry out secure communications thanks to the absence of a physical signal. But given the method's significant complexity, it might not appeal to commercial developers."
Nicolas Gisin of the University of Geneva said the work was "quite original, quite clever" and describes the non-physical communication as "very puzzling." He said that a key challenge will be to quantify precisely how many photons or fractions of photons are actually transferred from Bob to Alice. Reports of the discovery have appeared in various publications including Physics World.com and the Wall Street Journal.
Source: ARAB NEWS