Physicist Discovers How to Teleport Energy

From: ernesto <ernesto.alto_at_gmail.com>
Date: Fri, 5 Feb 2010 10:00:51 -0800 (PST)

Qualcuno si ricorda del mio giochino postato anni fa circa la
possibilit� di trasmettere un'informazione usando l'entanglement ? Una
specie di superenalotto tra noi e gli astronauti arrivati sugli
eventuali pianetri delle stelle del Centauro? (Pandora?...).

Si disse allora che non era possibile trasmettere informazione e oggi
si parla di poter teletrasmettere un virus, ma anche un virus scemo �
un grumo di informazuione.

Ora � la volta dell'energia:

E se si pu� trasmettere energia, si pu� trrasmettere informazione:
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Physicist Discovers How to Teleport Energy

First, they teleported photons, then atoms and ions. Now one physicist
has worked out how to do it with energy, a technique that has profound
implications for the future of physics.

In 1993, Charlie Bennett at IBM's Watson Research Center in New York
State and a few pals showed how to transmit quantum information from
one point in space to another without traversing the intervening
space.

The technique relies on the strange quantum phenomenon called
entanglement, in which two particles share the same existence. This
deep connection means that a measurement on one particle immediately
influences the other, even though they are light-years apart. Bennett
and company worked out how to exploit this to send information. (The
influence between the particles may be immediate, but the process does
not violate relativity because some informatiom has to be sent
classically at the speed of light.) They called the technique
teleportation.

That's not really an overstatement of its potential. Since quantum
particles are indistinguishable but for the information they carry,
there is no need to transmit them themselves. A much simpler idea is
to send the information they contain instead and ensure that there is
a ready supply of particles at the other end to take on their
identity. Since then, physicists have used these ideas to actually
teleport photons, atoms, and ions. And it's not too hard to imagine
that molecules and perhaps even viruses could be teleported in the not-
too-distant future.

But Masahiro Hotta at Tohoku University in Japan has come up with a
much more exotic idea. Why not use the same quantum principles to
teleport energy?

Today, building on a number of papers published in the last year,
Hotta outlines his idea and its implications. The process of
teleportation involves making a measurement on each one an entangled
pair of particles. He points out that the measurement on the first
particle injects quantum energy into the system. He then shows that by
carefully choosing the measurement to do on the second particle, it is
possible to extract the original energy.

All this is possible because there are always quantum fluctuations in
the energy of any particle. The teleportation process allows you to
inject quantum energy at one point in the universe and then exploit
quantum energy fluctuations to extract it from another point. Of
course, the energy of the system as whole is unchanged.

He gives the example of a string of entangled ions oscillating back
and forth in an electric field trap, a bit like Newton's balls.
Measuring the state of the first ion injects energy into the system in
the form of a phonon, a quantum of oscillation. Hotta says that
performing the right kind of measurement on the last ion extracts this
energy. Since this can be done at the speed of light (in principle),
the phonon doesn't travel across the intermediate ions so there is no
heating of these ions. The energy has been transmitted without
traveling across the intervening space. That's teleportation.

Just how we might exploit the ability to teleport energy isn't clear
yet. Post your suggestions in the comments section if you have any.

But the really exciting stuff is the implications this has for the
foundations of physics. Hotta says that his approach gives physicists
a way of exploring the relationship between quantum information and
quantum energy for the first time.

There is a growing sense that the properties of the universe are best
described not by the laws that govern matter but by the laws that
govern information. This appears to be true for the quantum world, is
certainly true for special relativity, and is currently being explored
for general relativity. Having a way to handle energy on the same
footing may help to draw these diverse strands together.

Interesting stuff. There's no telling where this kind of thinking
might lead.

Ref: arxiv.org/abs/1002.0200: Energy-Entanglement Relation for Quantum
Energy Teleportation
Received on Fri Feb 05 2010 - 19:00:51 CET