The University of Michigan researchers said their accomplishment marks an advance toward super-fast quantum computing and might also be the start of a quantum internet.

The scientists used light to establish what's called "entanglement" between two atoms, which were trapped 1 meter apart in separate enclosures. They described entangling as similar to controlling the outcome of one coin flip with the outcome of a separate coin flip.

"This linkage between remote atoms could be the fundamental piece of a radically new quantum computer architecture," said Professor Christopher Monroe, principal investigator of the research who has since moved to the University of Maryland.

"Now that the technique has been demonstrated, it should be possible to scale it up to networks of many interconnected components that will eventually be necessary for quantum information processing," Monroe said.

The research by Monroe, lead author David Moehring and colleagues is reported in the Sept. 6 issue of the journal Nature.