Quantum teleportation mediated by surface plasmon polariton

Abstract

Surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) are collective excitations of free electrons propagating along a metal-dielectric interface. Although some basic quantum properties of SPPs, such as the preservation of entanglement, the wave-particle duality of a single plasmon, the quantum interference of two plasmons, and the verification of entanglement generation, have been shown, more advanced quantum information protocols have yet to be demonstrated with SPPs. Here, we experimentally realize quantum state teleportation between single photons and SPPs. To achieve this, we use polarization-entangled photon pairs, coherent photon–plasmon–photon conversion on a metallic subwavelength hole array, complete Bell-state measurements and an active feed-forward technique. The results of both quantum state and quantum process tomography confirm the quantum nature of the SPP mediated teleportation. An average state fidelity of 0.889 ± 0.004 and a process fidelity of 0.820 ± 0.005 , which are well above the classical limit, are achieved. Our work shows that SPPs may be useful for realizing complex quantum protocols in a photonic-plasmonic hybrid quantum network.