# I Teleportation isn't exclusively quantum...?

1. Mar 8, 2016

### DirkMan

"Teleportation describes the transmission of information without transport of neither matter nor energy. For many years, however, it has been implicitly assumed that this scheme is of inherently nonlocal nature, and therefore exclusive to quantum systems. Here, we experimentally demonstrate that the concept of teleportation can be readily generalized beyond the quantum realm. We present an optical implementation of the teleportation protocol solely based on classical entanglement between spatial and modal degrees of freedom, entirely independent of nonlocality. Our findings could enable novel methods for distributing information between different transmission channels and may provide the means to leverage the advantages of both quantum and classical systems to create a robust hybrid communication infrastructure."

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/lpor.201500252/abstract

"In doing so, we have shown that teleportation is a general concept, that transcends the distinction between classical or quantum systems, and that non-locality ultimately differentiates between these two realms."

http://arxiv.org/abs/1509.06217

What are the implications of this for quanthum systems ,if it is true ? Does it cast a shadow of a doubt to the non-local properties of quantum systems ?

2. Mar 8, 2016

3. Mar 8, 2016

### Strilanc

Based on a paper they reference, their classical analogue of qubits (they call them "cebit"s) is a direct encoding of the $2^n$ complex amplitudes (defining a quantum state of $n$ qubits) into the horizontal and vertical polarization amplitudes of $2^{n-1}$ laser beams.

In other words, I think they're just running an unusual classical simulation of quantum mechanics. Using a computer program to store and operate on the $2^n$ amplitudes, instead of lasers and mirrors and what have you, is literally a million times easier. I guess I never realized that writing code to do a few matrix multiplications was "extending the concept of teleportation to the classical realm". You can do it right now, just by dragging some boxes around!

I must be missing something, because otherwise I have no idea why this was published. Maybe the particular optical setup they created is impressive in some way?

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