Spooky action at a distance goes multicast

[popeyespappy]

For the first time, physicists at the Institute for Quantum Computing (IQC) at the University of Waterloo have demonstrated the distribution of three entangled photons at three different locations (Alice, Bob and Charlie) several hundreds of metres apart, proving quantum nonlocality for more than two entangled photons.

The findings of the experiment, Experimental Three-Particle Quantum Nonlocality under Strict Locality Conditions, are published in Nature Photonics today.

Once described by Einstein as "spooky action at a distance", this three-photon entanglement leads to interesting possibilities for multi-party quantum communication.

Nonlocality describes the ability of particles to instantaneously know about each other's state, even when separated by large distances. In the quantum world, this means it might be possible to transfer information instantaneously – faster than the speed of light. This contravenes what Einstein called the "principle of local action," the rule that distant objects cannot have direct influence on one another, and that an object is directly influenced only by its immediate surroundings.

http://phys.org/news/2014-03-door-multi-...antum.html