1. Time and Frequency Division, NIST, Boulder, Colorado 80305, USA
2. Mathematical and Computational Sciences Division, NIST, Boulder, Colorado 80305, USA
3. Present address: Department of Physics, University of Otago, PO Box 56, Dunedin, New Zealand

Correspondence to: D. J. Wineland¹ Email: djw@boulder.nist.gov

Quantum teleportation¹ 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 communication² and quantum computation³. Previous experimental demonstrations have been implemented with optical systems that used both discrete and continuous variables^{4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9}, and with liquid-state nuclear magnetic resonance¹⁰. Here we report unconditional teleportation⁵ of massive particle qubits using atomic (⁹Be⁺) 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 entanglement¹¹. 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}.

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