physics4me

The previous record of six entangled objects has now eclipsed by an eight object system. We do not yet go to 11.

The creation of increasingly large multipartite entangled states is not only a fundamental scientific endeavour in itself, but is also the enabling technology for quantum information.
Tremendous experimental effort has been devoted to generating multiparticle entanglement with a growing number of qubits.
So far, up to six spatially separated single photons have been entangled based on parametric downconversion. Multiple degrees of freedom of a single photon have been exploited to generate forms of hyper-entangled states.
Here, using new ultra-bright sources of entangled photon pairs, an eight-photon interferometer and post-selection detection, we demonstrate for the first time the creation of an eight-photon Schrödinger cat state1 with genuine multipartite entanglement.
The ability to control eight individual photons represents a step towards optical quantum computation, and will enable new experiments on, for example, quantum simulation21, 22, topological error correction and testing entanglement dynamics under decoherence….

Read more: nature.com and arstechnica.com