Bouwmeester quantum teleportation experiment Created 2026-10-20 Updated 2026-10-25
Dik Bouwmeester and colleagues demonstrated selected-outcome photon-polarization quantum teleportation. An ultraviolet pump traversed a nonlinear crystal twice: one passage supplied an entangled pair, the other the input photon and its trigger partner. The input and one resource photon interfered at a beam splitter; output-detector coincidences selected their antisymmetric Bell state. Narrow filters made their coherence time exceed the pump duration, preserving temporal indistinguishability.
The reported pump pulses were long at ; photons filtered to bandwidth had a quoted coherence time. A polarization analyzer measured the remote output. Trigger-conditioned fourfold coincidences excluded a double-pair background without subtraction. The selected Bell result had ideal probability ; this demonstration did not distinguish and actively correct all four outcomes.[ref]
Dirk Bouwmeester Created 2026-10-18 Updated 2026-11-05
Dik Bouwmeester coauthored the 1997 optical demonstration of quantum teleportation. A joint Bell-state measurement on an input photon and one member of an entangled pair conditionally transferred the input polarization quantum state to the other member. The reported experiment selected a particular detected outcome. The process consumes the shared entanglement and requires classical information about the measurement result; it does not send a usable message faster than light.[ref]
Figure 1.
Portrait of Dirk Bouwmeester in 2014
. Image from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research, via Wikimedia Commons; the linked file page provides photographer credits and usage information. Source.
In quantum teleportation, Alice transfers an arbitrary unknown qubit using one shared Bell pair and two bits of classical communication. Define , with . Regrouping the initial three-qubit state into this Bell basis gives
Alice's Bell-basis measurement selects each label with probability . She sends to Bob, who applies the inverse , restoring . The correction depends on the measurement label, not on the unknown amplitudes. Before the message, Bob's average state is , independent of the input; quantum no-signalling therefore prevents superluminal communication. The shared pair is consumed and Alice does not retain an independent copy, in agreement with the no-cloning theorem.
The Bouwmeester quantum teleportation experiment used photon polarization, a down-conversion entangled pair, a beam-splitter Bell-state analyzer and coincidence-conditioned output polarization measurements. Temporal indistinguishability of the two analyzer photons was essential. Its successful selected Bell outcome demonstrated the state transfer, rather than a deterministic implementation of all four outcomes.[ref]
The general experimental tasks are to distribute entanglement, prepare and synchronize the input, perform a sufficiently discriminating joint measurement, communicate the label and apply or account for the correction. A demonstration must test nonorthogonal input states, not merely transfer a known classical basis label. Finite efficiency, accidental coincidences, distinguishability and phase drift reduce success probability or teleportation fidelity. Postselected verification, a heralded usable output and unconditional deterministic teleportation are distinct experimental claims.