THE weird quantum effect of entanglement is surprisingly robust, say researchers who鈥檝e managed to send pairs of entangled photons through metal without the connection breaking down.
When photons are entangled, the properties of one are intimately linked to the other. 杏吧原创s thought the link was easily broken, but a team led by Erwin Altewischer at Leiden University in the Netherlands discovered otherwise when they fired entangled photons at gold sheets. These were peppered with holes 200 nanometres wide. That鈥檚 too small for light to squeeze through, but as the photons hit the gold surface, they created waves of electrons that passed through the holes and re-emitted the photons on the other side.
Altewischer found the photons were still entangled. The effect could give scientists developing quantum computers a new way to manipulate entangled particles, he says.
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