How Donuts represent Hyper-entangled Qubits herald @NASA's faster-than-light Quantum Teleportation Network

We are slowly stepping closer and closer to a day when Quantum Teleportation can be used to send data since it was first theorized in 1993. All thanks to some Glow-in-the-Dark Chocolate Glaze Donuts using my tried and tested recipe developed while at the MICO College University as detailed in my blog article entitled “Cooking for Exams at MICO - How to make Glow-in-the-Dark Chocolate Glaze Donuts to go with Sorrel Wine”.

This as a team of researchers have discovered a way to improve the information density by reducing the resources needed and thereby improve the reliability of Quantum teleportation as reported in the article “Donuts, math, and superdense teleportation of Quantum information”, published May 28, 2015 by Siv K. Schwink, Physorg.  

Their research, published in on Thursday May 28^th, 2015 issue of Nature Communications Journal, is part of a collaboration with NASA (National Aeronautical space Administration) to test Quantum Teleportation in space from the ISS (International Space Station) to an Optical Telescope on Earth.

The collaborator bandwagon is again overcrowded, so yet again, I must draw for a list:

1.      Doctoral candidate Trent Graham from the University of Illinois at Urbana­Champaign

2.      Dr. Hamid Javadi of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California

3.      Dr. Herbert Bernstein from the Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts

4.      Dr. Jungsang Kim, physicist  from Duke University in Durham, North Carolina

5.      Dr. Marius Junge, a Mathematician from the University of Illinois

6.      Dr. Paul Kwiat, physicist from the University of Illinois at Urbana­Champaign

7.      Dr. Tzu­Chieh Wei of State University of New York at Stony Brook

The team recently received funding from NASA Headquarter's Space Communication and Navigation program, which has project Directors Badri Younes and Barry Geldzahler, to explore the feasibility of Quantum Teleportation from a space based location back to the Earth. Based on this published research, they're close to the idea of one day building a Quantum Teleportation Network for practical communication.

That team led by physicist Paul Kwiat of the University of Illinois at Urbana­Champaign and paper co­author Herbert Bernstein of Hampshire College in Amherst, Massechusets takes advantage of the properties of a torus, a shape which look like a Donut, to improve the efficiently of Quantum Teleportation by making better phase diagram for the windowing of super-dense Quantum data for hyper-entangled atoms being used in the Quantum Teleportation Network between Alice and Bob.

Don’t worry, I’m just as confused as you are, dear reader! So how did Donuts help?

First, before the explanation gets complicated, it would be a good idea to whip up a batch of Glow-in-the-Dark Chocolate Glaze Donuts using my tried and tested recipe developed while at the MICO College University as detailed in my blog article entitled “Cooking for Exams at MICO - How to make Glow-in-the-Dark Chocolate Glaze Donuts to go with Sorrel Wine”.

Researchers develope Toroidal Phase diagram to represent Hyper-entangled Qubits - How Donuts are the key

Turns out Donuts aren’t just good for eating; they’re also helpful with improving information density. 

When sending information over such a Quantum Teleportation Network, the sender and receiver, referred to as Alice and Bob respectively, have to get their samples of supercooled atoms Quantum entangled i.e. showing the same Quantum state as explained in extreme detail in my blog article entitled “Kavli Institute of Nanoscience demonstrates Quantum Teleportation – Super-cooled Diamonds demonstrate faster-than-light potential for Computing and Telecommunications”.

Only this time, instead of using the Spin Quantum Number (m_s) of a sample of atoms, the team used the polarization and the Orbital Quantum Number, (l) , of photons to transmit the initial key data to get the two (2) samples of atoms Quantum entangled, a state that they referred to as being hyper-entangled.  

By using multiple variable of the photons being transmitted in the laser beam used in the FSO (Free Space Optics) communications platform, it allowed the researchers to compress more data, making the communication become more superdense. This is basically a form a data compression, no different from using QAM (Quadrature Amplitude Modulation) employing phase angle and amplitude to transmit different symbols representing groups of bits i.e. 1 (on bit) 0 (of bit) in a Data Schema.

But instead of a flat 2D (two dimensional) phase diagram, the researchers used a 3D (three dimensional) analog; a sphere. This, however, presented its difficulties, as it was difficult to label unique points on that phase diagram to represent the polarization and the Orbital Quantum Number (l), of photons that was used a symbols for the hyper-entangled state being transmitted by Alice to represent the Qubits being sent to Bob, the recipient

To quote Dr. Paul Kwiat as he munches on a Donut: “In classical computing, a unit of information, called a bit, can have only one of two possible values—it's either a zero or a one. A Quantum bit, or qubit, can simultaneously hold many values, arbitrary superpositions of 0 and 1 at the same time, which makes faster, more powerful.  So a qubit could be represented as a point on a sphere, and to specify what state it is, one would need longitude and latitude. That's a lot of information compared to just a 0 or a 1”.

Enter the Donut, stage left, no doubt stumbled upon by the researcher when they had hit a dead end. During that period while on their allotted one (1) hour lunch break, they must have realized that they literally were munching on the solution to the problem of transmission fidelity of qubits in their hands!

Researchers love eating Donuts - How Donuts may herald NASA's faster-than-light Quantum Teleportation Network

With a 3D Donut, or torus, it's a lot easier to represent polarization and the Orbital Quantum Number (l), as you have the points on the Donut hole as a unique reference instead of just the central axis.

Each set of qubits is represented by a unique polarization and the Orbital Quantum Number (l) point on the Donut wheel, which Dr. Paul Kwiat explains at length, while no doubt mooching on an actual Donut in hand: “What makes our new scheme work is a restrictive set of states. The analog would be, instead of using a sphere, we are going to use a torus, or Donut shape. A sphere can only rotate on an axis, and there is no way to get an opposite point for every point on a sphere by rotating it—because the axis points, the north and the south, don't move. With a Donut, if you rotate it 180 degrees, every point becomes its opposite. Instead of axis points you have a Donut hole. Another advantage, the Donut shape actually has more surface area than the sphere, mathematically speaking—this means it has more distinct points that can be used as encoded information”.

By so doing, the researchers increased the transmission fidelity from 44%, the tradition upper limit, to nearly 88% i.e. successful transmission of information using the Quantum entangled data 88% of the time. This is nowhere close to the five 9's i.e. 99.999% reliability uptime required by Telecom Providers, but it’s getting close. 

Restricting the number of possible states being represented using a toroidal phase diagram to represent the polarization and the Orbital Quantum Number (l), of photons to initiate the hyper-entangled state, puts the team a step closer to a practical Quantum Teleportation Network.

Again, to quote Lead author and Doctoral candidate Trent Graham from the University of Illinois at Urbana­Champaign, who might possibly be munching on a Donut, the source of inspiration for this breakthrough: “We are constrained to sending a certain class of Quantum states called 'equimodular' states. We can deterministically perform operations on this constrained set of states, which are impossible to perfectly perform with completely general Quantum states. Deterministic describes a definite outcome, as opposed to one that is probabilistic. With existing technologies, previous photonic Quantum teleportation schemes either cannot work every time or require extensive experimental resources. Our new scheme could work every time with simple measurements”.

Hopefully when NASA test this Quantum Teleportation Network on the ISS and publishes their results, their researchers will use a lot less jargon to explain the fact that they're using a 3D Donut shape phase diagram, as all this talk about Donuts is making me hungry!