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Experimental realization of freely propagating teleported qubits

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Abstract

Quantum teleportation1 is central to quantum communication, and plays an important role in a number of quantum computation protocols2,3. Most information-processing applications of quantum teleportation include the subsequent manipulation of the qubit (the teleported photon), so it is highly desirable to have a teleportation procedure resulting in high-quality, freely flying qubits. In our previous teleportation experiment4, the teleported qubit had to be detected (and thus destroyed) to verify the success of the procedure. Here we report a teleportation experiment that results in freely propagating individual qubits. The basic idea is to suppress unwanted coincidence detection events by providing the photon to be teleported much less frequently than the auxiliary entangled pair. Therefore, a case of successful teleportation can be identified with high probability without the need actually to detect the teleported photon. The experimental fidelity of our procedure surpasses the theoretical limit required for the implementation of quantum repeaters5,6.

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Figure 1: Diagrams showing the principles of the Innsbruck experiment and of achieving free propagation of teleported qubits.
Figure 2: Set-up for experimental demonstration of free propagation of teleported qubits.
Figure 3: Two typical experimental results for 45° teleportation.
Figure 4: Conditional fidelities and non-conditional fidelities obtained in 45° teleportation for different neutral filters.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Austrian Science Foundation (FWF), the TMR and the QuComm programmes of the European Commission and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institut für Experimentalphysik, Universität Wien, Boltzmanngasse 5, 1090, Wien, Austria

    Jian-Wei Pan, Sara Gasparoni, Markus Aspelmeyer, Thomas Jennewein & Anton Zeilinger

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  1. Jian-Wei Pan
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  2. Sara Gasparoni
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  3. Markus Aspelmeyer
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  4. Thomas Jennewein
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  5. Anton Zeilinger
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Correspondence to Jian-Wei Pan.

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Pan, JW., Gasparoni, S., Aspelmeyer, M. et al. Experimental realization of freely propagating teleported qubits. Nature 421, 721–725 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature01412

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