Entangled Photons vs. Murky Media ✛

Original: "Entanglement-enabled image transmission through complex media"
arXiv:2508.14616 · 2025-08-20 · CC BY 4.0 · 1 min
Scientists used quantum entanglement to transmit images through scattering media that completely obscure ordinary light.

Ordinary light in murky water, fog, or behind cosmic dust scatters, turning any image into a blurry mess. Even precise brightness measurements (photometry) can't cut through this chaos.

But you can take a pair of entangled photons. These particles are linked by an invisible thread: whatever happens to one instantly reflects on the other, like two swimmers always moving in sync. This strange connection was studied by John Bell and Alain Aspect. One photon is sent through murky water, while the other stays aside. Although the transmitted light becomes unrecognizable, the image information doesn't vanish: it's preserved in the movements of the untouched twin. By reading these movements, you can reconstruct a sharp image as if the medium had become transparent, but only for this quantum duo.

You get a hidden channel: to an outside observer, it's just white noise, but for those who know the pair's rhythm, it's a clear picture. Such a connection is nearly impossible to intercept, and it can be adapted to any scattering medium, from biological tissues to clouds.

Quantum entanglement is already used for ultra-secure banking transactions. The new method promises to take this protection to the level of entire images, not just keys.

E_{\text{out}} = S E_{\text{in}}
The output field equals the scattering matrix multiplied by the input field.
\Psi_{\text{out}} = S \Psi_{\text{in}} S^t
The output two-photon wavefunction is obtained by multiplying the input matrix by the scattering matrix on the left and by its transpose on the right.
Scientists
Erwin SchrödingerHugh Everett IIIStephen HawkingJacob BekensteinLudwig BoltzmannDavid Deutsch
Concepts
quantum internet photon entanglement three photon entanglement light by light scattering light scattering data transmission turbid medium optical fiber camera transmission optical filter information spread secure communication holography tomography encryption hybrid approach semiclassical data center quantum light networks