Entangled resource for interfacing single- and dual-rail optical qubits

Abstract

Today's most widely used method of encoding quantum information in optical qubits is the dual-rail basis, often carried out through the polarisation of a single photon. On the other hand, many stationary carriers of quantum information – such as atoms – couple to light via the single-rail encoding in which the qubit is encoded in the number of photons. As such, interconversion between the two encodings is paramount in order to achieve cohesive quantum networks. In this paper, we demonstrate this by generating an entangled resource between the two encodings and using it to teleport a dual-rail qubit onto its single-rail counterpart. This work completes the set of tools necessary for the interconversion between the three primary encodings of the qubit in the optical field: single-rail, dual-rail and continuous-variable.