(July 1, 2015) A team
from the RIKEN Center for Emergent Matter Science, along with collaborators
from several Japanese institutions, have successfully produced pairs of
spin-entangled electrons and demonstrated, for the first time, that these
electrons remain entangled even when they are separated from one another on a
chip. This research could contribute to the creation of futuristic quantum
networks operating using quantum teleportation, which could allow information
contained in quantum bits—qubits—to be shared between many elements on chip, a
key requirement to scale up the power of a quantum computer. The ability to
create non-local entangled electron pairs—known as Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen
pairs—on demand has long been a dream.
Russell Deacon, who carried out the work, says, "We set
out to demonstrate that spin-entangled electrons could be reliably produced. So
far, researchers have been successful in creating entangled photons, since
photons are extremely stable and do not interact. Electrons, by contrast, are
profoundly affected by their environment. We chose to try to show that
electrons can be entangled through their spin, a property that is relatively
stable."