Deterministic quantum teleportation of atomic qubits

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(4-9), and with liquid-state nuclear magnetic resonance(10). Here we report unconditional teleportation(5) of massive particle qubits using atomic (Be-9(+)) 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).