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 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 coherent states of different phases and obtain the teleported qubit with a fidelity of 0.83±0.04. We also find that the phase of the resulting qubit varies consistently with that of the input, having a standard deviation of 3.8∘ from the target value. Our work opens up the way to wide application of quantum information processing techniques where discrete- and continuous-variable encodings are combined within the same optical circuit.
@article{arxiv.1605.08649,
title = {A scheme for quantum teleportation between discrete and continuous encodings of an optical qubit},
author = {Alexander E. Ulanov and Demid Sychev and Anastasia A. Pushkina and Ilya A. Fedorov and A. I. Lvovsky},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1605.08649},
year = {2017}
}