Deterministic quantum teleportation of a path-encoded state using entangled photons

Abstract Quantum teleportation enables a way to transmit an arbitrary qubit state from one location to another. The standard scheme for teleportation in optical setups involves three photons: an entangled photon pair and a photon carrying the quantum state to be teleported. The interaction between photons in such schemes makes quantum teleportation probabilistic. Here, we demonstrate a novel scheme for deterministic quantum teleportation of an arbitrary qubit state using only a polarization-entangled photon pair in a linear optical setup. By introducing the path degree of freedom (DOF) to one of the entangled photons and encoding the arbitrary qubit state into it, we achieve complete Bell state discrimination within our measurement strategy. This enables deterministic teleportation of a qubit state in an optical scheme with high fidelity. We report an average teleportation fidelity of $0.88 \pm 0.04$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mn>0.88</mml:mn> <mml:mo>±</mml:mo> <mml:mn>0.04</mml:mn> </mml:math> . The dependence of fidelity on the visibility of single-photon interference used in our scheme highlights the possibility of further improving the teleportation fidelity.