Entanglement in Quantum Information

Quantum information science is concerned with the manipulation, computation and communication of information, where the information is encoded in two (or more) level quantum systems called "qubits", unlike classical information, which is encoded in Boolean "bits". The devices used in this science are governed by the principles of quantum mechanics, which opens the possibility for a large range of applications. In this colloquium talk I will give a gentle review of this exciting field with the focus on the fascinating role entanglement plays in quantum information. In particular, I will start with a brief history of the discovery of non-intuitive quantum correlations (i.e. entanglement) and then show that quantum entanglement, besides being of interest from a fundamental point of view, is a valuable resource for many quantum information tasks such as quantum teleportation and superdense coding.