Tag Archives: University of Jena

Teleportation of a classic object (Star Trek’s teleportation)

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A March 4, 2016 Friedrich-Schiller-Universitaet Jena press release (also on EurekAlert) describes the work in terms of Star Trek,

“Beam me up, Scotty” – even if Captain Kirk supposedly never said this exact phrase, it remains a popular catch-phrase to this day. Whenever the chief commander of the television series starship USS Enterprise (NCC-1701) wanted to go back to his control centre, this command was enough to take him back to the control centre instantly – travelling through the infinity of outer space without any loss of time.

But is all of this science fiction that was thought up in the 1960s? Not quite: Physicists are actually capable of beaming–or “teleporting” as it is called in technical language – if not actual solid particles at least their properties.

“Many of the ideas from Star Trek that back then appeared to be revolutionary have become reality,” explains Prof. Dr Alexander Szameit from the University of Jena (Germany). “Doors that open automatically, video telephony or flip phones–all things we have first seen on the starship USS Enterprise,” exemplifies the Juniorprofessor of Diamond-/Carbon-Based Optical Systems. So why not also teleporting? “Elementary particles such as electrons and light particles exist per se in a spatially delocalized state,” says Szameit. For these particles, it is with a certain probability thus possible to be in different places at the same time. “Within such a system spread across multiple locations, it is possible to transmit information from one location to another without any loss of time.” This process is called quantum teleportation and has been known for several years.

The team of scientists lead by science fiction fan Szameit has now for the first demonstrated in an experiment that the concept of teleportation does not only persist in the world of quantum particles, but also in our classical world. …

They used a special form of laser beams in the experiment. “As can be done with the physical states of elementary particles, the properties of light beams can also be entangled,” explains Dr Marco Ornigotti, a member of Prof. Szameit’s team. For physicists, “entanglement” means a sort of codification. “You link the information you would like to transmit to a particular property of the light,” clarifies Ornigotti who led the experiments for the study that was now presented.

In their particular case, the physicists have encoded some information in a particular polarisation direction of the laser light and have transmitted this information to the shape of the laser beam using teleportation. “With this form of teleportation, we can, however, not bridge any given distance,” admits Szameit. “On the contrary, classic teleportation only works locally.” But just like it did at the starship USS Enterprise or in quantum teleportation, the information is transmitted fully and instantly, without any loss of time. And this makes this kind of information transmission a highly interesting option in telecommunication for instance, underlines Szameit.

Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,

Demonstration of local teleportation using classical entanglement by Diego Guzman-Silva, Robert Brüning, Felix Zimmermann, Christian Vetter, Markus Gräfe, Matthias Heinrich, Stefan Nolte, Michael Duparré, Andrea Aiello, Marco Ornigotti and Alexander Szameit. Laser & Photonics Reviews DOI: 10.1002/lpor.201500252 Article first published online: 11 JAN 2016

© 2016 by WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim

This paper is behind a paywall.

Sweet, sugary computer (calculator); chemistry in action

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This computer is also described as sugar-based molecular computing in a June 19, 2014 news item on Nanowerk,

In a chemistry lab at the Friedrich Schiller University Jena (Germany): Prof. Dr. Alexander Schiller works at a rectangular plastic board with 384 small wells. The chemist carefully pipets some drops of sugar solution into a row of the tiny reaction vessels. As soon as the fluid has mixed with the contents of the vessels, fluorescence starts in some of the wells. What the Junior Professor for Photonic Materials does here – with his own hands – could also be called in a very simplified way, the ‘sweetest computer in the world’. The reason: the sugar molecules Schiller uses are part of a chemical sequence for information processing.

A June 19, 2014 Friedrich Schiller University Jena news release (also on EurekAlert), which originated the news item, provides an description by the lead researcher, Schiller,

Professor Schiller explains. “There is either electricity flowing between both poles of an electric conductor or there isn’t.” These potential differences are being coded as “0” and “1” and can be linked via logic gates – the Boolean operators like AND, OR, NOT. In this way, a number of different starting signals and complex circuits are possible.

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These logic links however can also be realized with the help of chemical substances, as the Jena chemists were able to show. For their ‘sugar computer’ they use several components: One fluorescent dye and a so-called fluorescence quencher. “If there are both components involved, the colorant can’t display its impact and we don’t see a fluorescence signal,” Schiller says. But if sugar molecules are involved, the fluorescence quencher reacts with the sugar and thus loses its capability to suppress the fluorescence signal, which makes the dye fluorescent. Depending on whether the dye, the fluorescence quencher and the sugar are on hand to give the signal, a fluorescent signal results – “1” – or no signal – “0”.

“We link chemical reactions with computer algorithms in our system in order to process complex information,” Martin Elstner explains. “If a fluorescence signal is registered, the algorithm determines what goes into the reaction vessel next.” In this way signals are not translated and processed in a current flow, like in a computer but in a flow of matter. That their chemical processing platform works, Schiller and his staff demonstrated in the current study with the sample calculation 10 + 15. “It took our sugar computer about 40 minutes, but the result was correct,” Prof. Schiller says smiling, and clarifies: “It is not our aim to develop a chemical competition to established computer chips.” The chemist rather sees the field of application in medical diagnostics. So it is for instance conceivable to connect the chemical analysis of several parameters of blood and urine samples via the molecular logic platform for a final diagnosis and thus enable decisions for therapies.

Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,

Sugar-based Molecular Computing by Material Implication by Martin Elstner, Jörg Axthelm, and Prof.Dr. Alexander Schiller. Angewandte Chemie International Edition DOI: 10.1002/anie.201403769 Article first published online: 12 JUN 2014

© 2014 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim

This paper is behind a paywall.

One final note, Friedrich Schiller University Jena is also known as the University of Jena.