Quantum snare entraps key fifth photon

In a new feat of quantum-scale manipulation, physicists have joined five photons in a condition of mutually linked properties called entanglement.

Jian-Wei Pan of the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei and his colleagues achieved this complex state by firing an intense laser beam into a collection of crystals, mirrors, and detectors.

Five is a magic number in this context because entanglement of that many or more photons or other particles would enable a future quantum computer to find and eliminate random errors in its data, Pan says.