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Physics \ Optics & Photonics  Editors' notes

Physics \ Quantum Physics

Long-distance quantum teleportation enabled by

multiplexed quantum memories
by ICFO

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Experimental set-up. a Entangled photon pairs are generated at Alice. Signal photons are routed to a Pr-doped crystal, …

Quantum teleportation is a technique allowing the transfer of quantum information

between two distant quantum objects, a sender and a receiver, using a phenomenon
called quantum entanglement as a resource.
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The unique feature of this process is that the actual information is not transferred by
sending quantum bits (qubits) through a communication channel connecting the two
parties; instead, the information is destroyed at one location and appears at the other one
without physically traveling between the two. This surprising property is enabled by
quantum entanglement, accompanied by the transmission of classical bits.

There is a deep interest in quantum teleportation nowadays within the field of quantum
communications and quantum networks because it would allow the transfer of quantum
bits between network nodes over very long distances, using previously shared
entanglement.

This would help the integration of quantum technologies into current telecommunication
networks and extend the ultra-secure communications enabled by these systems to very
long distances. In addition, quantum teleportation permits the transfer of quantum
information between different kinds of quantum systems, e.g., between light and matter
or between different kinds of quantum nodes.

Quantum teleportation was theoretically proposed in the early 90s and experimental
demonstrations were carried out by several groups around the world. While the scientific
community has gained extensive experience on how to perform these experiments, there
is still an open question on how to teleport information in a practical way, allowing reliable
and fast quantum communication over an extended network.

It seems clear that such an infrastructure should be compatible with the current
telecommunications network. In addition, the protocol of quantum teleportation requires a
final operation to be applied on the teleported qubit, conditioned on the result of the
teleportation measurement (transmitted by classical bits), in order to transfer the
information faithfully and at a higher rate, a feature called active feed-forward.
This means that the receiver requires a device known as a quantum memory that can
store the qubit without degrading it until the final operation can be implemented. Finally,
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this quantum memory should be able to operate in a multiplexed fashion to maximize the
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speed of teleporting information when the sender and the receiver are far away. To date,
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no implementation had incorporated these three requirements in the same
demonstration.
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peer-reviewed publication
In a recent study published in Nature Communications, ICFO researchers Dario Lago-
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Rivera, Jelena V. Rakonjac, Samuele Grandi, led by ICREA Prof. at ICFO Hugues de
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Riedmatten have reported achieving long distance teleportation of quantum information
from a photon to a solid-state qubit, a photon
Ok!stored in a multiplexed quantum memory.

The technique involved the use of an active feed-forward scheme, which, together with the
multimodality of the memory, has allowed maximization of the teleportation rate. The
proposed architecture was compatible with the telecommunications channels, and thus
enabling future integration and scalability for long-distance quantum communication.

How to achieve quantum teleportation

The team built two experimental setups, that in the jargon of the community are usually
called Alice and Bob. The two setups were connected by a 1km optical fiber spun up in a
spool, to emulate a physical distance between the parties.

Three photons were involved in the experiment. In the first setup, Alice, the team used a
special crystal to create two entangled photons: the first photon at 606 nm, called signal
photon, and the second photon called idler photon, compatible with the
telecommunications infrastructure.

Once created, "we kept the first 606 nm photon at Alice and stored it in a multiplexed
solid-state quantum memory, holding it in the memory for future processing. At the same
time, we took the telecom photon created at Alice and sent it through the 1km of optical
fiber to reach the second experimental setup, called Bob," Dario Lago recalls.
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In this second editorial process
setup, Bob, and policies.
the scientists Editors have
had another highlighted
crystal thecreated a third
where they
photon, where following attributesthe
they had encoded while ensuring
quantum bit the
theycontent's
wanted tocredibility:
teleport. Once the third
photon was created, the second photon had arrived to Bob from Alice, and this is where
fact-checked
the core of the teleportation experiment takes place.
peer-reviewed publication
Teleporting information over 1km
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The second and third photons interfered with each other through what is known as a Bell
State measurement (BSM). The effect of thisOk!measurement was to mix the state of the
second and third photon. Thanks to the fact that the first and second photons were
entangled to begin with, i.e. their joint state was highly correlated, the result of the BSM
was that of transferring the information encoded in the third photon to the first one, stored
by Alice in the quantum memory, 1 km away.

As Dario Lago and Jelena Rakonjac mention, "we are capable of transferring information
between two photons that were never in contact before, but connected through a third
photon that was indeed entangled with the first. The uniqueness of this experiment lies in
the fact that we employed a multiplexed quantum memory capable of storing the first
photon for long enough such that by the time Alice found out that the interaction had
happened, we were still able to process the teleported information as the protocol
requires."

This processing that Dario and Jelena mention was the active feed-forward technique
mentioned earlier. Depending on the outcome of the BSM, a phase-shift was applied to the
first photon after storage in the memory. In this way, the same state would always be
encoded in the first photon. Without this, half of the teleportation events would have to be
discarded.

Moreover, the multimodality of the quantum memory allowed them to increase the
teleportation rate beyond the limits imposed by the 1 km separation between them
without degrading the quality of the teleported qubit. Overall, this resulted in a
teleportation rate three times higher than for a single-mode quantum memory, only limited
by the speed of the classical hardware.

Scalability and integration

The experiment carried out by this group in 2021, where they achieved for the first time
entanglement of two multimode quantum memories separated by 10 meters and heralded
by a photon at the telecommunication wavelength, has been the precursor of this
experiment.
As Hugues de Riedmatten emphasizes, "Quantum teleportation will be crucial for enabling
high-quality long-distance communication for the future quantum internet. Our goal is to
This article has been reviewed according to Science X's
implement quantum teleportation in more and more complex networks, with previously
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distributed entanglement. The solid-state and multiplexed nature of our quantum nodes
following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility:
as well as their compatibility with the telecom network make them a promising approach
to deploy the technology over long distance in the installed fiber network."
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Further improvements are already being planned. On the one hand, the team is focused on
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developing and improving the technology in order to extend the setup to much longer
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distances while maintaining the efficiency and rates. On the other hand, they also aim at
studying and using this technique in the transfer
Ok! of information between different types of
quantum nodes, for a future quantum Internet that will be able to distribute and process
quantum information between remote parties.

More information: Dario Lago-Rivera et al, Long distance multiplexed quantum teleportation from a
telecom photon to a solid-state qubit, Nature Communications (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-37518-5

Journal information: Nature Communications 

Provided by ICFO 

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