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Tuesday, March 25, 2008

DENSE IS SMART

'Superdense' coding gets denser

The record for the most amount of information sent by a single photon has been broken by researchers at the University of Illinois. Using the direction of “wiggling” and “twisting” of a pair of hyper-entangled photons, they have beaten a fundamental limit on the channel capacity for dense coding with linear optics.

“Dense coding is arguably the protocol that launched the field of quantum communication,” said Paul Kwiat, a John Bardeen Professor of Physics and Electrical and Computer Engineering.

In classical coding, a single photon will convey only one of two messages, or one bit of information. In dense coding, a single photon can convey one of four messages, or two bits of information.

“Dense coding is possible because the properties of photons can be linked to one another through a peculiar process called quantum entanglement,” Kwiat said. “This bizarre coupling can link two photons, even if they are located on opposite sides of the galaxy.”

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