TOSHIBA engineers managed to send quantum information on optical fiber 600 kilometers long and set a new record. This is reported on the website of the Japanese corporation.
The report states that thanks to the new technology that stabilizes the fluctuations in the environment, the specialists managed to demonstrate the transfer of quantum bits (qubits) at a distance of hundreds of kilometers. Based on this invention, scientists can develop a new generation network, according to which it will be possible to safely transmit data between cities and whole countries.
Fiber transmitted information is encrypted using a quantum key distribution (QKD) technology. Engineers noted that to create encryption keys, the protocol uses quantum networks that are practically immune to hacking. In the case of penetration into the network, both parties will be warned. This means that users and corporations can share valuable data for huge distances, without fear of leakage.
Until recently, the transfer of cubes by fiber optic networks was limited to a small length of the network. Small changes in the environment, as temperature fluctuations, can cause an expansion or compression of the cable and the destruction of information. To reduce environmental impact, TOSHIBA engineers have developed a method called two-band stabilization. In this case, the data is sent by two signals – the first compensates for rapidly changing fluctuations, the second is used to more accurately adjust the phase. In this case, you can qualitatively transmit data at a distance of up to 600 kilometers.
“Thanks to the new methods that we have developed, further expansion of the connection distance for QKD is still possible, and our solutions can also be applied to other protocols and applications of quantum communication,” said Toshiba European Pittaluga Researcher (Mirko Pittaluga) . The company’s plans to stretch a safe super-speed highway, uniting London, Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam and Dublin.
Cubet is the smallest unit of information in a quantum computer used for quantum computing. At the end of May, Google announced that it would create a quantum computer for several billion dollars. The new device will allow computing, to which the modern computer will spend 10 thousand years, for three and a half minutes.