Quantum teleportation breakthrough earns Pan Jianwei’s team China’s top science award
China will have the world’s largest quantum communication network, including the first-ever quantum satellite launched in space, by the time summer rolls around, says professor
A breakthrough in quantum technology has earned China’s top science accolade as President Xi Jinping handed the State Natural Science Award (first class) to a team of quantum physicists led by Pan Jianwei in Beijing on Friday.
Pan’s team at the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei, Anhui province, set a world record in terms of quantum teleportation, or the sending of quantum information - for example, the exact state of an atom - from one place to another.
The revolutionary technology is expected to pave way for the development of unbreakable quantum communication networks, as well as a quantum computer billions of times faster than current supercomputers.
China’s annual natural science award was not short on controversy, however.
Last year’s award was handed to a team of computer scientists led by Zhang Yaoxue for their remote desktop project. But this prompted an outcry among the research community due to the low citation of their research paper and the fact that they lifted codes from open-source software.