‘Spooky’ Particles Transit DC Suburbs, a Step Toward a Quantum Network
In early 2025, special signals wended their way through a fiber-optic highway strung above the streets and sidewalks of the Maryland suburbs. The arrival of those signals at their destination marks a significant step toward a long-held dream of building a “quantum network.” Researchers believe that this emerging technology could someday link quantum devices in ways that supercharge scientific research, enable ultrasecure communications and boost the power of future quantum computers.
National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) researchers and collaborators reported this advance in the Journal of Optical Communications and Networking.
A Special Kind of Network
Quantum networks depend on a special phenomenon called entanglement. Often described as “spooky action at a distance” (a translation of a phrase coined by Albert Einstein), entangled objects share a unified quantum state, meaning they cannot be described independently even if they are far apart. When one object from an entangled pair is...
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