Philip Cunningham draws our attention to “New records set up with “Screws of Light””:
In principle, twisted light can carry an arbitrary large amount of information per photon. This is in contrast to the polarization of light, which is limited to one bit per photon. For example, data rates of up to 100 terabits per second, which correspond to about 120 Blu-Ray discs per second, have already been achieved under laboratory conditions. The transmission under realistic conditions, however, is still in its infancy. In addition to transmission over short distances in special fiber optics, transmission of such light beams over free space, required for instance for satellite communication, was limited to three kilometers so far; achieved by the same Viennese team two years ago
In the current study, the research team around Anton Zeilinger and Mario Krenn show that information encoded in twisted light can still be reconstructed even after more than 100 kilometers. The experiment has been conducted between the canary islands of La Palma and Tenerife, which is 143 kilometer away. More.
Paper. (paywall) Cunningham notes that the implications of all this are very friendly to theistic presuppositions.
Communication with spatially modulated light through turbulent air across Vienna:
He offers related notes:
Single photons to soak up data (2002) Excerpt: the orbital angular momentum of a photon can take on an infinite number of values. Since a photon can also exist in a superposition of these states, it could – in principle – be encoded with an infinite amount of information.
Illustration: page 18 and 19: image of how to encode an arbitrary large amount of information onto a photon by taking advantage of its spin and orbital angular momentum
By its conventional definition, a photon is one unit of excitation of a mode of the electromagnetic field. The modes of the electromagnetic field constitute a countably infinite set of basis functions, and in this sense the amount of information that can be impressed onto an individual photon is unlimited. – Robert W. Boyd – The Enabling Technology for Quantum Information Science 2013 – University of Rochester, Rochester, NY – lead researcher of the experiment which encoded information in a photon in 2010
“Ultra-Dense Optical Storage – on One Photon” (January 19, 2007)
Excerpt: Researchers at the University of Rochester have made an optics breakthrough that allows them to encode an entire image’s worth of data into a photon, slow the image down for storage, and then retrieve the image intact… As a wave, it passed through all parts of the stencil at once…
Question: Why do we need infinite-dimensional Hilbert spaces in physics? You need an infinite dimensional Hilbert space to represent a wavefunction of any continuous observable (like position for example).
Explaining Information Transfer in Quantum Teleportation: Excerpt: In contrast to a classical bit, the description of a (quantum) qubit requires an infinite amount of information. The amount of information is infinite because two real numbers are required in the expansion of the state vector of a two state quantum system (Jozsa 1997, 1) – Armond Duwell, University of Pittsburgh
Quantum Computing – Stanford Encyclopedia: Excerpt: “Theoretically, a single qubit can store an infinite amount of information, yet when measured it yields only the classical result…”
Direct measurement of the quantum wavefunction (June 2011)
Excerpt: The wavefunction is the complex distribution used to completely describe a quantum system, and is central to quantum theory. But despite its fundamental role, it is typically introduced as an abstract element of the theory with no explicit definition.,,, Here we show that the wavefunction can be measured directly by the sequential measurement of two complementary variables of the system. The crux of our method is that the first measurement is performed in a gentle way through weak measurement so as not to invalidate the second. The result is that the real and imaginary components of the wavefunction appear directly on our measurement apparatus. We give an experimental example by directly measuring the transverse spatial wavefunction of a single photon, a task not previously realized by any method.
Wave function gets real in quantum experiment (February 2, 2015)
Excerpt:It underpins the whole theory of quantum mechanics, but does it exist? For nearly a century physicists have argued about whether the wave function is a real part of the world or just a mathematical tool. Now, the first experiment in years to draw a line in the quantum sand suggests we should take it seriously.
Now, Eric Cavalcanti at the University of Sydney and Alessandro Fedrizzi at the University of Queensland, both in Australia, and their colleagues have made a measurement of the reality of the quantum wave function. Their results rule out a large class of interpretations of quantum mechanics and suggest that if there is any objective description of the world, the famous wave function is part of it: Schrödinger’s cat actually is both dead and alive.
Wave function gets real in quantum experiment (February 2, 2015)
Excerpt:It underpins the whole theory of quantum mechanics, but does it exist? For nearly a century physicists have argued about whether the wave function is a real part of the world or just a mathematical tool. Now, the first experiment in years to draw a line in the quantum sand suggests we should take it seriously.
Now, Eric Cavalcanti at the University of Sydney and Alessandro Fedrizzi at the University of Queensland, both in Australia, and their colleagues have made a measurement of the reality of the quantum wave function. Their results rule out a large class of interpretations of quantum mechanics and suggest that if there is any objective description of the world, the famous wave function is part of it: Schrödinger’s cat actually is both dead and alive.
Quantum experiment verifies Einstein’s “spooky action at a distance” (March 24, 2015)
Excerpts: An experiment,, has for the first time demonstrated Albert Einstein’s original conception of “spooky action at a distance” using a single particle.…
Professor Howard Wiseman and his experimental collaborators,, report their use of homodyne measurements to show what Einstein did not believe to be real, namely the non-local collapse of a (single) particle’s wave function … According to quantum mechanics, a single particle can be described by a wave function that spreads over arbitrarily large distances … by splitting a single photon between two laboratories, scientists have used homodyne detectors—which measure wave-like properties—to show the collapse of the wave function is a real effect … This phenomenon is explained in quantum theory,, the instantaneous non-local, (beyond space and time), collapse of the wave function to wherever the particle is detected. … “Einstein never accepted orthodox quantum mechanics and the original basis of his contention was this single-particle argument. This is why it is important to demonstrate non-local wave function collapse with a single particle,” says Professor Wiseman. …”Einstein’s view was that the detection of the particle only ever at one point could be much better explained by the hypothesis that the particle is only ever at one point, without invoking the instantaneous collapse of the wave function to nothing at all other points. …
“However, rather than simply detecting the presence or absence of the particle, we used homodyne measurements enabling one party to make different measurements and the other, using quantum tomography, to test the effect of those choices.” …”Through these different measurements, you see the wave function collapse in different ways, thus proving its existence and showing that Einstein was wrong.”
Double Slit, Quantum-Electrodynamics, and Christian Theism (vid)
Fine tuning of Light, to Atmosphere, Water, Photosynthesis, and Human Vision (vid)
See also: What is the difference between classical and quantum information? Rob Sheldon: What about QM information in DNA? Well, the sequence is pretty much fixed, so it would have to be located elsewhere–perhaps the methylation patterns that interact non-locally. Whatever it is, it would have to depend on permutations rather than combinations.