Quantum teleportation is a key principle for quantum information technology. It permits the transfer of quantum information into an otherwise inaccessible space, while also permitting the transfer of photon information into a quantum memory without revealing or destroying the stored quantum information. Here, we show reliable quantum state transfer of photon polarization into a carbon isotope nuclear spin coupled to a nitrogen-vacancy center in diamond based on photon-electron Bell state measurement by photon absorption. The carbon spin is first entangled with the electron spin, which is then permitted to absorb a photon into a spin-orbit correlated eigenstate. Detection of the electron after relaxation into the spin ground state allows post-selected transfer of arbitrary photon polarization into the carbon memory. The quantum state transfer scheme allows individual addressing of integrated quantum memories to realize scalable quantum repeaters for long-haul quantum communications, and distributed quantum computers for large-scale quantum computation and metrology.

Geometric nature, which appears in photon polarization, also appears in spin polarization under a zero magnetic field. These two polarized quanta, one travelling in vacuum and the other staying in matter, behave the same as geometric quantum bits or qubits, which are promising for noise resilience compared to the commonly used dynamic qubits. Here we show that geometric photon and spin qubits are entangled upon spontaneous emission with the help of the spin − orbit entanglement inherent in a nitrogen-vacancy center in diamond. The geometric spin qubit is defined in a degenerate subsystem of spin triplet electrons and manipulated with a polarized microwave. An experiment shows an entanglement state fidelity of 86.8%. The demonstrated entangled emission, combined with previously demonstrated entangled absorption, generates purely geometric entanglement between remote matters in a process that is insensitive of time, frequency, and space mode matching, which paves the way for building a noise-resilient quantum repeater network or a quantum internet.

Fault-tolerant quantum memory plays a key role in interfacing quantum computers with quantum networks to construct quantum computer networks. Manipulation of spin quantum memory generally requires a magnetic field, which hinders the integration with superconducting qubits. Completely zero-field operation is desirable for scaling up a quantum computer based on superconducting qubits. Here we demonstrate quantum error correction to protect the nuclear spin of the nitrogen as a quantum memory in a diamond nitrogen-vacancy center with two nuclear spins of the surrounding carbon isotopes under a zero magnetic field. The quantum error correction makes quantum memory resilient against operational or environmental errors without the need for magnetic fields and opens a way toward distributed quantum computation and a quantum internet with memory-based quantum interfaces or quantum repeaters.

The symmetry of the space where a spin qubit resides plays an essential role in the manipulation of quantum entanglement, which governs the performance of quantum information systems. Application of a magnetic field, which is usually necessary for spin manipulation and readout, inevitably breaks the spatial symmetry to induce competition among quantization axes between internal and external fields, thus limiting the purity of the entanglement. If we could manipulate and readout entanglement under a zero magnetic field, we would be able to avoid the competition among quantization axes to achieve ideally high fidelity. We here demonstrate the complete Bell state measurement, which is a core element of quantum processing, of two carbon nuclear spins in the vicinity of a diamond nitrogen-vacancy center. The demonstration was made possible by holonomic entanglement manipulations based on the geometric phase with a polarized microwave under a zero magnetic field, where the quantization axis is uniquely defined by the hyperfine field. The demonstrated scheme allows high-fidelity entanglement processing even when magnetic fields cannot be applied to the integration of superconducting and spin qubits, thereby paving the way for building fault-tolerant distributed quantum computers and quantum repeater networks.

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