A photon captures the “quantum state” of the electron that generated it. When the photon hits another electron, the target electron absorbs the quantum state of the source electron.
The quantum state is the magnetic field (expressed as a vector) generated by the source electron as it “spins” around a nucleus. The field vector has both an angle and a magnitude. It is information and can represent a set of bits.
The more accurately you can measure the field of an electron, the more bits you can reliably store in it and read from it. Right now, they can read up to 2k bits from a single electron.
If they are really using quantum entanglement, they don’t need the photon. Because the source and target electrons are entangled, changes in the field generated by the source instantly induce changes in the entangled target.
Entanglement is the only way you could do this from an earth station to a satellite. That’s what makes this article about the Chinese quantum satellite so very impressive.
“Entanglement is the only way you could do this from an earth station to a satellite”
So, how did they get the entangled electron to the satellite? Did they entangle it before the launch and sent it up with the satellite? And how is that single electron stored and kept track of on both earth and the satellite?
And can many electrons be entangled to the same electron and among each other?
Also I don’t get how a photon “captures” the quantum state of an electron, since they’re such different “particles”.
Just trying to understand...