Deterministic Quantum Teleportation with Atoms

Quantum teleportation 1 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 communication 2 and quantum computation 3 . 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 resonance 10 . Here we report unconditional teleportation 5 of massive particle qubits using atomic ( 9 Be + ) 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 entanglement 11 . 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 .