Deterministic quantum teleportation of atomic qubits

Abstract

Quantum teleportation¹ provides a means to transport quantum information efficiently from one location to another, without the physical transfer of the associated quantum-information carrier. This is achieved by using the non-local correlations of previously distributed, entangled quantum bits (qubits). Teleportation is expected to play an integral role in quantum communication² and quantum computation³. Previous experimental demonstrations have been implemented with optical systems that used both discrete and continuous variables^4,5,6,7,8,9, and with liquid-state nuclear magnetic resonance¹⁰. Here we report unconditional teleportation⁵ of massive particle qubits using atomic (⁹Be⁺) ions confined in a segmented ion trap, which aids individual qubit addressing. We achieve an average fidelity of 78 per cent, which exceeds the fidelity of any protocol that does not use entanglement¹¹. This demonstration is also important because it incorporates most of the techniques necessary for scalable quantum information processing in an ion-trap system^12,13.