The Physics World 2015 Breakthrough of the Year goes to PAN Jianwei and LU Chaoyang from the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei, for being the first to achieve the simultaneous quantum teleportation of two physical properties of a fundamental particle – the photon. 

The prize, which recognizes outstanding physics research, will be awarded to PAN, LU and their team on Friday 11 December. PAN was “very excited indeed” for his work to be chosen as the Physics World Breakthrough of the Year, which is selected by a panel of four Physics World editors and reporters.  

LU and PAN’s team is the first to have simultaneously transferred a photon’s spin (polarization) and its orbital angular momentum (how its wavefront rotates) to another photon some distance away. Their research, published in Nature in February of this year, shows how they were able to reliably and repeatedly carry out the teleportation. 

In 1993 an international group of physicists proved theoretically that the teleportation of a quantum state is possible, so long as the original state being copied is destroyed – one of the laws of quantum mechanics (the “no-cloning” theorem) dictates that a quantum state cannot be perfectly copied. Successfully teleporting a quantum state therefore involves precisely measuring a system’s state, transmitting that information to a distant location and then reconstructing a flawless copy of the original state. In other words, a complete perfect transfer is done when the first particle loses all of the properties that are teleported to the other. 

“Quantum teleportation is a 'disembodied' way to transfer the quantum states of an object over long distance – disintegrating in one place and reappearing intact in another distant location – without actual transport of the object itself,” explains PAN. 

The first experimental teleportation of a photon polarization was achieved in 1997 – a project PAN was involved in – and many other entities have been transferred since then. But all of these experiments were limited to teleporting a single property and scaling that up to even two properties has proved to be a herculean feat, until now. 

Although it is possible to extend PAN's method to teleport more than two properties simultaneously, this becomes increasingly difficult with each added property – the likely limit is three. To do this would require the ability to experimentally control 10 photons, while the current record is eight.  

The team is working hard to change that, though, and PAN says that they “hope to reach 10-photon entanglement in a few months”. Indeed, he hopes to double that figure to 20 within the next three years. “We should be able to teleport three degrees of freedom of a single photon or multiple photons soon,” he adds. 

PAN adds that “quantum teleportation has been recognized as a key element in the ongoing development of long-distance quantum communications that provide unbreakable security, ultrafast quantum computers and quantum networks”. Quantum teleportation is expected to play an essential role in the development of quantum computers and quantum cryptography systems, which use the properties of photons, atoms and other quantum systems to store, process and transmit information. (Physics World)