arXiv:1605.08649 · Physical Review Letters
Quantum Teleportation Between Discrete and Continuous Encodings of an Optical Qubit
Alexander E. Ulanov, Demid Sychev, Anastasia A. Pushkina, Ilya A. Fedorov, Alexander I. Lvovsky
Abstract
The transfer of quantum information between physical systems of a different nature is a central matter in quantum technologies. Particularly challenging is the transfer between discrete and continuous degrees of freedom of various harmonic oscillator systems. Here we implement a protocol for teleporting a continuous-variable optical qubit, encoded by means of low-amplitude coherent states, onto a discrete-variable, single-rail qubit-a superposition of the vacuum and single-photon optical states-via a hybrid entangled resource. We test our protocol on a one-dimensional manifold of the input qubit space and demonstrate the mapping onto the equator of the teleported qubit's Bloch sphere with an average fidelity of 0.83±0.04. Our work opens up the way to the wide application of quantum information processing techniques where discrete- and continuous-variable encodings are combined within the same optical circuit.