Entanglement Swapping: A New Quantum Trick

In an important step for the infant field of quantum communications, researchers from the University of Geneva in Switzerland have, for the first time, realized an “entanglement swapping” experiment with photon pairs emitted continuously by two different sources. This experiment is a key facet of quantum entanglement, the strange phenomenon in which two photons or other quantum bodies behave as one unit, even if spatially separate. Entanglement is at the heart of many proposed quantum information and communications schemes, including quantum computing and encryption.