Can sombody explain how quantum teleportation is supposed to work (theoretically speaking)?

Answer 1

First, "quantum teleportation" does NOT actually involve any teleporting. That's an unfortunate misnomer, because physicists uses words to express some specific technical procedure that can be misinterpreted.

What "quantum teleportation" involves is sending (1) one of two entangled particle pair, and (2) a piece of classical information. In this process, there is NO teleporting of matter or energy, and NO copying of information at speeds greater than the speed of light.

Entanglement in quantum physics means that there is a pair or more particles whose quantum states are correlated, NOT necessarily identical. For example, a pair of electrons can be entangled such that the spin of one electron is "up", and the spin of the other is "down", but you don't know which is which.

So when we "quantum teleport" a particle, what we are doing is physically separating the two entangled particle pair, and then a measurement is performed on one of the particles. This measurement on one particle instantly collapses the quantum state of the other particle. This is what entanglement means. However, we must then send the result of the measurement of the first particle to where the other entangle particle is located, so that an operation can be performed on the entangle particle to produce the quantum state of the first particle.

Notice that you need to physically send one of the entangled particle to another location at speeds less or equal to light, and then you also need to communicate "classically" the information about what measurement have been made to where the entangle poarticle was send to (also at speeds less or equal to light). Then the quantum state of the original entangled particle can be reproduced, and usually this involve the use of another particle (although this part of the "teleportation process" is never described clearly and in much detail).

So I wouldn't hold my breath for too long waiting for developing technology to do what they can do in Star Trek.

Answer 2

It has to do with entaglements. I found this on Wikipedia:

Until recently, scientists had been able to transport only light or single atoms over short distances (millimeters). However, it was reported in October 2006 in the weekly science magazine "Nature" [3] that Professor Eugene Polzik and his team at the Niels Bohr Institute at Copenhagen University in Denmark have made a breakthrough in the field.[4] Their experiment involved the transportation of information from a weak light beam to a macroscopic atomic object containing thousands of billions of atoms, located half a meter away. The technique involved the use of quantum entanglement, quantum measurement and quantum feedback.

I think what you do is take two particles that are in an entagled state, that is, they share certain properties that make them tied to each other, then you attach other particles to tone and this allows the other one to make a sort of copy of the one you started with. It seems pretty complicated, but I will try to read into it more myself...

If you can follow the math:

Answer 3

Well, say you have 2 atoms whose nuclei are identical, but with different electron states. Now, read in the electron state of the first one and make the second one exactly like it. Voila, you have "teleported" the atom, for the socond one "is" the first one and they may be seperated by any distance. (I think it's more like copying than teleporting)

**Edit
To telepotr a person, all you need do is repeat this process several trillion times, one for every atom and molecule in your body.

Answer 4

May be not the object of teleportation is going somewhere, but the reality where he wants to go is transferred to him ...something like absorbtion of time...