South African, Chinese researchers in quantum communications breakthrough

A joint team composed of researchers from South Africa’s University of the Witwatersrand (Wits), in Johannesburg, and China’s Huazhang University of Science and Technology (HUST) in Wuhan, has successfully demonstrated the transmission of “multiple quantum patterns of twisted light” down a 250 m-long conventional optical fibre link. Normally, such a conventional link could only carry a single pattern of light. The research team was led by Wits School of Physics Prof Andrew Forbes and HUST Prof Jian Wang. The results of their work are contained in a paper, Multi-dimensional entanglement transport through a single mode fibre, recently published online in Science Advances.