Science fiction has been the inspiration for much of the modern technology we take for granted today, like smartphones, household robots and even submarines. Spaceships and space stations, self-driving cars and 3D printers are further examples of technology that first appeared in science fiction and is now either, or almost, a reality.

Teleportation is another firm favourite of the sci-fi genre. But breaking something down into atoms and then reconstituting it as the same, continuous entity in a completely different location seems like a step too far, despite the huge technological leaps made in recent years.

However, quantum physicists have demonstrated that teleportation is actually possible. At least in the subatomic world of quantum mechanics and not in quite the same way as depicted in books, films and television. Quantum teleportation involves information rather than physical matter.

New research recently published in the Nature Communications journal follows on from last year’s confirmation that information could be passed from photon to photon on computer chips even without any physical connection between them. The new discovery is that the same this is also possible between electrons.

The researchers, from the University of Rochester and Purdue University, have been exploring new ways to create quantum-mechanical interactions between unconnected electrons. It’s an important stage in attempts to improve quantum computing, which it is hoped will revolutionise fields such as medicine and biotechnology in future years.

The concept of quantum teleportation is not new. Albert Einstein referred to quantum entanglement as ‘spooky action at a distance’. In entanglement, properties of one particle affect those of another, even at a significant distance. It’s one of the underlying concepts of quantum physics.

Quantum teleportation is a step further and involves the state of a third particle ‘teleporting’ to two other distant, entangled particles. The quantum teleportation concept is key to quantum computing. In a normal computer, there are billions of bits that have the single binary value of either ‘0’ or ‘1’. Information is encoded in these bits.

In quantum computing, quantum bits, known as qubits, can exist as both ‘0’ and ‘1’ at the same time. It is that ability to occupy more than one state at the same time that represents the huge potential of quantum computing. iT exponentially increases processing power, compared to even the most powerful non-quantum supercomputers in the world.

John Nichol, an assistant professor of physics at Rochester involved in the research explains:

“Individual electrons are promising qubits because they interact very easily with each other, and individual electron qubits in semiconductors are also scalable. Reliably creating long-distance interactions between electrons is essential for quantum computing.”

Until now creating entangled pairs of electronic qubits over long distances, required for quantum teleportation, has proven difficult. Photons naturally propagate over distance but electrons are typically localised in one place.

But a recently developed technique based on the principles of Heisenberg exchange coupling has provided a breakthrough. Individual electrons have north and south magnetic poles that can both face either up or down. Which direction a pole is facing at a given moment is the electron’s magnetic moment or ‘quantum spin state’.

Particles with the same magnetic moment cannot be in the same place at the same time. That means two electrons in the same quantum state cannot sit on top of each other. If they did, their states would swap back and forth in time.

That state swapping in, essentially, electron teleportation. As Nichol explains:

“We provide evidence for ‘entanglement swapping,’ in which we create entanglement between two electrons even though the particles never interact, and ‘quantum gate teleportation,’ a potentially useful technique for quantum computing using teleportation. Our work shows that this can be done even without photons.”

At the moment, the practical application of the discovery is all very theoretical but is considered a significant development in the pursuit of the knowledge that will be needed for scientists to one day build stable qubit semiconductors.