Ground-to-satellite quantum teleportation

By Ji-Gang Ren, Ping Xu, Hai-Lin Yong, Liang Zhang, Shengkai Liao, Juan Yin, Weiyue Liu, Wenqi Cai, Meng Yang, Li Li and 22 more. Nature, 2017

848 citations recorded by the source corpus.

An arbitrary unknown quantum state cannot be measured precisely or replicated perfectly. However, quantum teleportation enables unknown quantum states to be transferred reliably from one object to another over long distances, without physical travelling of the object itself. Long-distance teleportation is a fundamental element of protocols such as large-scale quantum networks and distributed quantum computation. But the distances over which transmission was achieved in previous teleportation experiments, which used optical fibres and terrestrial free-space channels, were limited to about 100 kilometres, owing to the photon loss of these channels. To realize a global-scale ‘quantum internet’ the range of quantum teleportation needs to be greatly extended. A promising way of doing so involves using satellite platforms and space-based links, which can connect two remote points on Earth with greatly reduced channel loss because most of the propagation path of the photons is in empty space. Here we report quantum teleportation of independent single-photon qubits from a ground observatory to a low-Earth-orbit satellite, through an uplink channel, over distances of up to 1,400 kilometres. To optimize the efficiency of the link and to counter the atmospheric turbulence in the uplink, we use a compact ultra-bright source of entangled photons, a narrow beam divergence and high-bandwidth and high-accuracy acquiring, pointing and tracking. We demonstrate successful quantum teleportation of six input states in mutually unbiased bases with an average fidelity of 0.80 ± 0.01, well above the optimal state-estimation fidelity on a single copy of a qubit (the classical limit). Our demonstration of a ground-to-satellite uplink for reliable and ultra-long-distance quantum teleportation is an essential step towards a global-scale quantum internet.

Subfields: Artificial Intelligence, Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/1533569b5044585c3094c259260a0d0f180d7e68

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Citations in the corpus

Development of Quantum Interconnects (QuICs) for Next-Generation Information Technologies (2021, background): “While the achieved transmission rates in these experiments might have greatly exceeded what would have been possible using fiber channels—in one case by nearly 20 orders of magnitude [60], [61], they are still often very low, and methods such as multiplexing or employing higher-dimensional states (”
Advances in quantum cryptography (2019, neutral): “[343] J.”
Imaging with quantum states of light (2019, methodology): “[21] J.”
Progress in satellite quantum key distribution (2017, background): “The main advantage of using an uplink is that it is not necessary to locate a (potentially complex) quantum light source in space, but only to place a receiver on board the satellites [42, 43].”
Orbital Angular Momentum States Enabling Fiber-based High-dimensional Quantum Communication (2018, background): “links between parties, such as satellites [2,3], free space [4,5], fibers [6,7], and very recently underwater links”
Twisted photons: new quantum perspectives in high dimensions (2017, neutral): “Since then, quantum teleportation has been performed in various different physical systems with ever improving quality – very recently even between a satellite and a ground station in China [106].”
High‐Dimensional Quantum Communication: Benefits, Progress, and Future Challenges (2019, background): “in quantum computing [1–5], communication [6–9] and simulation [10–14].”
Chip-to-chip quantum teleportation and multi-photon entanglement in silicon (2019, background): “The transmission and teleportation of quantum states promises secure quantum communication networks [20, 23].”
One-step quantum secure direct communication. (2021, background): “QT has been widely investigated in long distance [15], multiple degrees of freedom (DOFs) [16,17] and high dimension [18,19].”