Greg Chaffins 
By now a lot of us have at least heard of Quantum Entanglement. The remarkable and fascinating phenomenon called “spooky action at a distance” by Albert Einstein himself was first described by Einstein, Boris Podolsky, and Nathan Rosen back in 1935.
The concept of entanglement does much to challenge our classical understanding of how information and the physical world relate. Today scientists are pursuing Quantum Entanglement, moving it out of the world of theoretical physics and into the practical world of application.
There’s a long way to go with its development, but its capabilities is already showing promise in revolutionizing communication technologies.
What Is Quantum Entanglement?
Basically, entanglement is the almost magical condition where two or more particles become linked on such a basic level that their properties become correlated, no matter how far apart they become.
One example of this phenomenon is when photons become entangled, and the measurement of the polarization of one immediately impacts the other.
This impact is instant, and the distance between the different particles, even if it is thousand of miles, has no effect. Curiously it’s not faster than light, but rather relies on the nonlocal structure of quantum mechanics.
Security for Communication
The effect of entanglement opens the door to forms of communication that we can only dream of today. Not only would it be faster, but it would be more secure than anything we have to date. One way of implementing such security is with Quantum Key Distribution (QKD),
QKD would allow the sharing of encryption keys between entangled particles, If a third party attempted to intercept the key and read the contents it would corrupt the entangled state. This would immediately alert the affected parties that it is no longer secure. This would make QKD almost impenetrable by classical hacking methods.
Phenomenal Speed and Reach
The implementation of Quantum Teleportation could offer features that are impossible with classical methods. In its use neither matter nor energy is transported, but instead the state of a particle is changed, with its entangled counterpart reflecting the change. This state change can reach vast distances instantaneously, without any particles needing to be actually transported.
The information potentially transported by Quantum Teleportation can be as broad as anything else we are doing in our digital world today. In fact, it is not hard to imagine a future Quantum Internet, where Quantum Computers communicate through entanglement. Such a network would communicate instantaneously and would be naturally resistant (an understatement) to interception.
Developmental Challenges Remain
Developing a communication system based on Quantum Entanglement is not without its challenges. The Entanglement state is fragile by nature, and interactions with its environment can cause it to “decohere”, which is a fancy way to say it can severe the quantum link. Work is being done on such technologies as quantum repeaters to maintain the environmental state of the entangled particles.
But recent advancements have shown promise. China, through the use of its Micius satellite, has demonstrated repeatable Quantum Entanglement results over a distance of more than a thousand kilometers.
This is far from a global communication network but proves that such a design is indeed feasible and becomes an engineering challenge for the 21st century.
The Future of Communications
A communication system built on Quantum Entanglement is not only faster, but it can be much more secure as well. The idea of basing our communication systems on the strange interconnected fabric of the universe may seem daunting, but no doubt radio had the same dark mystique as well at first.
The future is going to be weirder than anything we can imagine today, and that is going to be a wonderful thing.
Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr famously engaged in a long-running collegial dispute about the meaning of quantum mechanics, now known as the Bohr–Einstein debates.
