Toward an Unhackable Quantum Internet

Entanglement — what Einstein called “spooky action at a distance” — allows bits of information to be perfectly correlated across any distance. Because quantum systems can’t be observed without changing, Alice could use entanglement to message Bob without any fear of eavesdroppers. This notion is the foundation for applications such quantum cryptography — security that is guaranteed by the laws of quantum physics.

Quantum communication over long distances, however, is also affected by conventional photon losses, which is one of the major obstacles for realizing large-scale quantum internet. But the same physical principle that makes quantum communication ultra-secure also makes it impossible to use existing, classical repeaters to fix information loss.

How can you amplify and correct a signal if you can’t read it? The solution to this seemingly impossible task involves a so-called quantum repeater. Unlike classical repeaters, which amplify a signal through an existing network, quantum repeaters create a network of entangled particles through which a message can be transmitted.

In essence, a quantum repeater is a small, special-purpose quantum computer. At each stage of such a network, quantum repeaters must be able to catch and process quantum bits of quantum information to correct errors and store them long enough for the rest of the network to be ready. Until now, that has been impossible for two reasons: First, single photons are very difficult to catch. Second, quantum information is notoriously fragile, making it very challenging to process and store for long periods of time.

Lukin’s lab, in collaboration with Marko Loncar, the Tiantsai Lin Professor of Electrical Engineering at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), Hongkun Park, Mark Hyman Jr. Professor of Chemistry at the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS), and Dirk Englund, associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science at MIT, has been working to harness a system that can perform both of these tasks well — silicon-vacancy color centers in diamonds.

These centers are tiny defects in a diamond’s atomic structure that can absorb and radiate light, giving rise to a diamond’s brilliant colors.

“Over the past several years, our labs have been working to understand and control individual silicon-vacancy color centers, particularly around how to use them as quantum memory devices for single photons,” said Mihir Bhaskar, a Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS) student in the Lukin group.

The researchers integrated an individual color-center into a nanofabricated diamond cavity, which confines the information-bearing photons and forces them to interact with the single color-center. They then placed the device in a dilution refrigerator, which reaches temperatures close to absolute zero, and sent individual photons through fiber optic cables into the refrigerator, where they were efficiently caught and trapped by the color-center.

The device can store the quantum information for milliseconds — long enough for information to be transported over thousands of kilometers. Electrodes embedded around the cavity were used to deliver control signals to process and preserve the information stored in the memory.

“This device combines the three most important elements of a quantum repeater — a long memory, the ability to efficiently catch information off photons, and a way to process it locally,” said Bart Machielse, a GSAS student in the Laboratory for Nanoscale Optics.  “Each of those challenges have been addressed separately but no one device has combined all three.”

“Currently, we are working to extend this research by deploying our quantum memories in real, urban fiber-optic links,” said Ralf Riedinger, a postdoctoral candidate in the Lukin group. “We plan to create large networks of entangled quantum memories and explore the first applications of the quantum internet.

“This is the first system-level demonstration, combining major advances in nanofabrication, photonics and quantum control, that shows clear quantum advantage to communicating information using quantum repeater nodes. We look forward to starting to explore new, unique applications using these techniques,” said Lukin.

Leah Burrows is a Harvard correspondent. This article is published courtesy of the Harvard Gazette, Harvard University’s official newspaper.