The researchers at the University of Queensland have utilized light particles producing a simulation of time travel with the use of a single photon following a "closed time-like curve" (CTC).

It is not actually time travel but the work of the researchers is looking at what can be predicted about quantum systems if time travel does exist at some time based on the behaviour of a simple two-photon quantum computer.

Led by Martin Ringbauer who is a PhD student, the research will add to the study of how time travel could be possible and how would the core scientific theory quantum mechanics change in new environments.

The team was able to send single particles of light which are known as photons along a path in space-time that returns the travelling object to the same point at an earlier time and is known as a closed time-like curve.

"This research is certainly not a demonstration of time travel or proof it's possible. We were starting from the point to discover what would happen if it was possible," Ringbauer told Fairfax Media.

Ringbauer says the intriguing issue of this research was not the potential of science-fiction but the insights time travel might give in the incompatible relationship between scientific theories that have been successful: Einstein's general relativity and quantum mechanics.

Time travel is possible in Einstein's theory of general relativity with closed time-like curves but it seems to cause several paradoxes in the real world.

Physics professor Tim Ralph of the University of Queensland told The Spectator that the study provides insights as to where and how nature may behave differently from how the current theories predict.

The implications of this work are esoteric for now. What they have been able to demonstrate is that in the presence of a time machine, the "no-cloning" theorem breaks down which prevents the perfect copying of quantum states.