Scientists Create Hybrid Quantum Teleportation Technique

Scientists may have found a new way to teleport qubits. By means of the quantum-mechanical entanglement of spatially separated light fields, they've managed to teleport photonic qubits with extreme reliability. This could pave the way to better quantum teleportation.

So what is quantum teleportation? It involves the transfer of arbitrary quantum states from a sender to a spatially distant receiver. Both sender and receiver initially share an entangled quantum state across the space in question--in the form of entangled photons.

This quantum teleportation is important to the processes of quantum information, such as what is used in quantum computing, in addition to quantum communication. Photons in particular are useful as ideal information carriers for quantum communication since they can transmit signals at the speed of light. A photon itself can represent a quantum bit or qubit analogous to a binary digit in standard classical information processing.

In order to accomplish this teleportation, the researchers employed a hybrid technique. This resulted in a complete deterministic and highly reliable quantum teleportation of photonic qubits. The accuracy of the transfer was between 79 to 82 percent, a huge leap forward in teleportation. In addition, the qubits were teleported much more efficiently than in previous experiments, even at a low degree of entanglement.

"The entanglement of photons functions very well in the Tokyo experiment--practically at the press of a button, as soon as the laser was switched on," said Peter van Loock, one of the researchers, in a news release. "In our experiment, there were precisely four sufficiently representative test states that were transferred from Alice to Bob [sender and receiver] using entanglement. Thanks to continuous entanglement, it was possible to transmit the photonic qubits in a deterministic fashion to Bob, in other words, in each run."

The findings are important for the future of information transfer. Scientists continue to develop techniques in order to accomplish teleportation. This latest one could lead to future research that, in theory, could become more widespread.

The findings are published in the journal Nature.