TY - JOUR

T1 - Quantum teleportation between light and matter

AU - Sherson, Jacob F.

AU - Krauter, Hanna

AU - Olsson, Rasmus K.

AU - Julsgaard, Brian

AU - Hammerer, Klemens

AU - Cirac, Ignacio

AU - Polzik, Eugene S.

N1 - Funding information: The experiment was performed at the Niels Bohr Institute, and was funded by the Danish National Research Foundation through the Center for Quantum Optics (QUANTOP), by EU grants COVAQIAL and QAP, and by the Carlsberg Foundation. I.C. and E.S.P. acknowledge the hospitality of the Institut de Ciències Fotòniques (ICFO) in Barcelona where ideas leading to this work were first discussed. The permanent address of K.H. is the Institut für theoretische Physik, Innsbruck, Austria.

PY - 2006/10/5

Y1 - 2006/10/5

N2 - Quantum teleportation is an important ingredient in distributed quantum networks, and can also serve as an elementary operation in quantum computers. Teleportation was first demonstrated as a transfer of a quantum state of light onto another light beam; later developments used optical relays and demonstrated entanglement swapping for continuous variables. The teleportation of a quantum state between two single material particles (trapped ions) has now also been achieved. Here we demonstrate teleportation between objects of a different nature-light and matter, which respectively represent 'flying' and 'stationary' media. A quantum state encoded in a light pulse is teleported onto a macroscopic object (an atomic ensemble containing 10 caesium atoms). Deterministic teleportation is achieved for sets of coherent states with mean photon number (n) up to a few hundred. The fidelities are 0.58 ± 0.02 for n = 20 and 0.60 ± 0.02 for n = 5- higher than any classical state transfer can possibly achieve. Besides being of fundamental interest, teleportation using a macroscopic atomic ensemble is relevant for the practical implementation of a quantum repeater. An important factor for the implementation of quantum networks is the teleportation distance between transmitter and receiver; this is 0.5 metres in the present experiment. As our experiment uses propagating light to achieve the entanglement of light and atoms required for teleportation, the present approach should be scalable to longer distances.

AB - Quantum teleportation is an important ingredient in distributed quantum networks, and can also serve as an elementary operation in quantum computers. Teleportation was first demonstrated as a transfer of a quantum state of light onto another light beam; later developments used optical relays and demonstrated entanglement swapping for continuous variables. The teleportation of a quantum state between two single material particles (trapped ions) has now also been achieved. Here we demonstrate teleportation between objects of a different nature-light and matter, which respectively represent 'flying' and 'stationary' media. A quantum state encoded in a light pulse is teleported onto a macroscopic object (an atomic ensemble containing 10 caesium atoms). Deterministic teleportation is achieved for sets of coherent states with mean photon number (n) up to a few hundred. The fidelities are 0.58 ± 0.02 for n = 20 and 0.60 ± 0.02 for n = 5- higher than any classical state transfer can possibly achieve. Besides being of fundamental interest, teleportation using a macroscopic atomic ensemble is relevant for the practical implementation of a quantum repeater. An important factor for the implementation of quantum networks is the teleportation distance between transmitter and receiver; this is 0.5 metres in the present experiment. As our experiment uses propagating light to achieve the entanglement of light and atoms required for teleportation, the present approach should be scalable to longer distances.

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=33749512818&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1038/nature05136

DO - 10.1038/nature05136

M3 - Article

AN - SCOPUS:33749512818

VL - 443

SP - 557

EP - 560

JO - Nature

JF - Nature

SN - 0028-0836

IS - 7111

ER -