Compared with traditional communication methods, quantum communication has become a major direction of future communication development with ultra-high security. Quantum communication that has been frequently reported before is based on the principle of entanglement. Today I will introduce a more weird form—— Counterfactual communication: Quantum communication without any particle transmission between two receivers. This effect of not sending particles to transmit a quantum state is also called the quantum Zeno effect.

According to a recent report by the physicist organization network, researchers at the University of Science and Technology of China have successfully achieved direct counterfactual quantum communication, transmitting a black and white bitmap from one location to another without sending any physical particles. This is in the history of communication. This is the first time. The research was designed and experimented by Chinese scientists from the University of Science and Technology of China in Shanghai, Hefei, and Tsinghua University. The nested quantum Zeno effect successfully realized counterfactual communication.

The quantum Zeno effect occurs when an unstable quantum system is repeatedly measured. In the quantum world, observing or measuring the system will cause the system to change. In this case, unstable particles will never decay during repeated observations. The quantum Zeno effect creates a virtually frozen system with a high probability. The research report was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.