Abstract
Absorption and emission, fundamental interactions between light and matter, enable the regeneration of a quantum state of light via matter through concatenated quantum state transfer based on the principle of quantum teleportation. This transfer is enabled by electron spin-orbit entanglement and electron-nuclear spin entanglement inherent within the material. Here, we demonstrate that a photon quantum state imprinted in polarization is transferred to another photon emitted from a nitrogen vacancy (NV) center. This transfer is heralded by the result of the Bell state measurement between the electron and nitrogen nuclear spins. We show that the minimum number of incident photons needed to achieve transfer is, on average, only 0.1 photons, enabling quantum teleportation over 10 km. This demonstration paves the way for a quantum repeater that is robust against phase and intensity errors, unlike the conventional photon interference scheme, thereby facilitating practical quantum networks.
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Data availability
The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon request.
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The code used for generating data of this study is available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
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Acknowledgements
H. Kosaka acknowledges the funding support from Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST) Moonshot R&D grant (JPMJMS2062) and JST CREST grant (JPMJCR1773). H. Kosaka also acknowledges the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC) for funding, research and development for construction of a global quantum cryptography network (JPMI00316) and from Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research (20H05661, 20K20441). R.Reyes acknowledges Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) Grant-in-Aid for JSPS Fellows (23KJ0983).
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R.R. designed and performed the experiments. Y.S. also designed the experiments. D.I., T.F. and K.W. also performed the experiments. T.M. and H. Kato contributed to the fabrication of the solid-immersion-lens structure. H. Kosaka supervised the project.
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Reyes, R., Sekiguchi, Y., Ito, D. et al. Quantum teleportation of a photon via absorption and emission for quantum repeater nodes. npj Quantum Inf (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41534-025-01169-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41534-025-01169-9
