Spooky Action Up Close - Quantum Effects In Diamonds.

It’s an old article, but worth a read.  Diamonds may end up being the basis for computers and networks in the future, thanks to EPR entanglement.

I highly recommend taking a gander at the related articles as well, particularly this one.

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A team of scientists from the Joint Quantum Institute at the University of Maryland, and the University of Michigan have successfully teleported a quantum state from one atom to another.

“Conventional electronic bits (short for binary digits), such as those in a personal computer, are always in one of two states: off or on, 0 or 1, high or low voltage, etc. Quantum bits, however, can be in some combination, called a “superposition,” of both states at the same time, like a coin that is simultaneously heads and tails – until a measurement is made. It is this phenomenon that gives quantum computation its extraordinary power.

At the start of the experimental process, each ion (designated A and B) is initialized in a given ground state. Then ion A is irradiated with a specially tailored microwave burst from one of its cage electrodes, placing the ion in some desired superposition of the two qubit states – in effect writing into memory the information to be teleported.”

After that, the ions are “excited” by a brief laser pulse, which causes each ion to shed just a single photon as it “calms” back into a ground state (on or off or both at the same time).

and then:

“The emitted photons are captured by lenses, routed to separate strands of fiber-optic cable, and carried into opposite sides of a 50-50 beamsplitter where it is equally probable for either photon to pass straight through the splitter or to be reflected. On either side of the beamsplitter output are detectors that can record the arrival of a single photon.”

To understand the impact this will have on computing:

“Photons are ideal for transferring information fast over long distances, whereas atoms offer a valuable medium for long-lived quantum memory. The combination represents an attractive architecture for a ‘quantum repeater,’ that would allow quantum information to be communicated over much larger distances than can be done with just photons. Also, the teleportation of quantum information in this way could form the basis of a new type of quantum internet that could outperform any conventional type of classical network for certain tasks.”

Check out the read link for more detailed information.