Now researchers from the University of Vienna and the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona have added a new twist to this phenomenon, by entangling three photons and adding a 3-D corkscrew motion to effectively allow multiple recipients to simultaneously receive information securely encoded in the one transmission.

Encoding entangled photons with particular spin states is a technique used in quantum cryptography to ensure that transmitted data arrives at its destination without being intercepted or changed. However, as each entangled pair is usually only capable of being encoded with one state – generally the direction of its polarization – the amount of data carried is limited to just one quantum bit (qubit) per photon.

In standard two-dimensional entanglement states, in line with quantum wave theory, a photon exists in all spin states at once. However, if a photon is passed through a polarizing filter that rejects given spin states, the photon can be made to exhibit just one of four possible states of spin – vertical, horizontal, left, or right – with particles in an entangled pair reflecting the polar opposite behavior of each other.