Quantum Teleportation between Remote Qubit Memories with Only a Single Photon as a Resource

Abstract

Quantum teleportation enables the deterministic exchange of qubits via lossy channels. While it is commonly believed that unconditional teleportation requires a preshared entangled qubit pair, here we demonstrate a protocol that is in principle unconditional and requires only a single photon as an ex-ante prepared resource. The photon successively interacts, first, with the receiver and then with the sender qubit memory. Its detection, followed by classical communication, heralds a successful teleportation. We teleport six mutually unbiased qubit states with average fidelity $\overline{\text{F}}=(88.3\pm1.3)\%$ at a rate of $6\,\mathrm{Hz}$ over $60\,\mathrm{m}$.