Two photons linked by intertwined threads of light

The science

How quantum teleportation works

It moves a quantum state, not matter.

How it works, in four steps

Quantum teleportation diagram An entangled pair, drawn as a wavy link, is shared between Alice and Bob. Alice measures her half together with the state psi, sends two ordinary bits at light speed or slower, and Bob rebuilds psi. The original is gone. 2 classical bits entangled pair Alice ψ Bob ψ
  1. 1Share an entangled pair.
  2. 2Measure your half together with ψ.
  3. 3Send 2 ordinary bits, at light speed or slower.
  4. 4Rebuild ψ at the far end. The original is gone.

Protocol: Bennett et al. 1993 (opens source)

Key words

From myth to physics

Narada's story raises a question science still asks.

In the Puranas, Narada roams freely between the worlds. Physics found something narrower but real: a quantum state can vanish here and reappear there, guided by light-speed signals.

Inspiration, not evidence. Read the inspiration →

Milestones

Real progress, worldwide

From a 1935 puzzle to networks and chips. Every step sourced.

Where it happened. Select a milestone below to light up its place on the map.
  • Innsbruck, Austria: 1997, 2004
  • Rome, Italy: 1997
  • Boulder area, Colorado, USA: 2004, 2024
  • La Palma, Canary Islands: 2012
  • Tenerife, Canary Islands: 2012
  • Hefei, China: 2015, 2026
  • Ngari, Tibet (Micius ground station): 2017
  • Fermilab, Illinois, USA: 2020
  • Caltech, Pasadena, USA: 2020
  • Delft, Netherlands: 2021, 2022
  • Evanston, Illinois, USA: 2024
  • Oxford, UK: 2025
  • Stuttgart, Germany: 2025
  • Vienna, Austria (team base): 2012
  1. 1935The EPR puzzleEinstein, Podolsky and Rosen argue quantum theory implies strange correlations between distant particles. Phys. Rev. (opens source)
  2. 1964Bell's theoremJohn Bell shows those correlations can be tested in the lab. Physics (opens source)

  3. 12.21 billion years

    Age of the oldest quasar light used to choose the settings of a Bell test (2018). Rauch et al. 2018 (opens source)

  4. 1982No-cloning theoremAn unknown quantum state cannot be copied, so teleportation must destroy the original. Nature (opens source)
  5. 1993Teleportation proposedBennett and colleagues show a state can be rebuilt from entanglement plus two classical bits. PRL (opens source)
  6. 1997First photon teleportationInnsbruck and Rome teams independently teleport a photon's polarisation state in the lab. Nature (opens source) · PRL (opens source) · Who was first? (opens source)Distance: Lab bench
  7. 2004Atoms join inTrapped-ion teams at Innsbruck and NIST teleport states between atoms, on demand, ~75–78% fidelity. Nature (NIST) (opens source) · Nature (Innsbruck) (opens source)Distance: Within one ion trap
  8. 2012143 km through open airPhoton states teleported between La Palma and Tenerife, a satellite-like link. Nature (opens source)Distance: 143 km free space
  9. 2015Two properties at onceHefei team teleports a photon's spin and orbital angular momentum together. Nature (opens source)Distance: Lab
  10. 2017Up to spacePhoton states teleported from Tibet to China's Micius satellite, up to 1,400 km away. Nature (opens source) · 1,200 km: separate entanglement result (opens source)Distance: Up to 1,400 km
  11. 2020Over 90% in fibreFermilab and Caltech teleport photon qubits with >90% fidelity over 44 km of fibre. PRX Quantum (opens source)Distance: 44 km fibre
  12. 2021Onto vibrating chipsDelft teleports a light qubit onto two tiny mechanical resonators, a step toward larger, heavier systems. Nature Photonics (opens source)Distance: Lab (chips 20 cm apart)
  13. 2022Nobel PrizeAspect, Clauser and Zeilinger honoured for entanglement experiments, including teleportation. NobelPrize.org (opens source)
  14. 2022Across a networkQuTech teleports a qubit between two network nodes that are not directly linked. Nature (opens source)Distance: Three-node lab network
  15. 2024Error-protected qubitQuantinuum teleports an error-corrected logical qubit, with 97.5% process fidelity. Science (opens source)Distance: Inside one processor
  16. 2024Shared with internet trafficNorthwestern teleports over 30 km of fibre also carrying 400 Gbps classical data. Optica (opens source) · Northwestern (opens source)Distance: 30.2 km fibre (lab spools)
  17. 2025Teleporting a logic gateOxford links two ion-trap processors by teleporting a gate and runs Grover's algorithm across them. Nature (opens source)Distance: ~2 m optical link
  18. 2025Two separate quantum dotsStuttgart teleports between photons from two different chip-based light sources, at telecom wavelengths. Nat. Commun. (opens source)Distance: ~10 m fibre
  19. 2026Beats sending the photonUSTC shows teleportation delivering photon states ~3× more efficiently than direct transmission through a lossy channel. Nature Physics (opens source)Distance: Lab, ~1% transmission channel

Download the timeline data (JSON)

“As far as we know, it is indeed the largest number of independently addressable quantum teleportation channels ever demonstrated simultaneously.”

Jietai Jing, East China Normal University, on teleporting across 100 channels at once (2026), via ScienceAlert (opens source) · PRL (opens source)

Latest from the labs

New results in the science

Reality check

How far can it go?

From one particle to ~7×1027 atoms.

  • Solid: demonstrated
  • Hatched: early demos or being built
  • Outline: first steps
  • Dashed, raised: no known path

  1. Photon states

    Demonstrated

    Routine in labs; up to 1,400 km to a satellite. Micius 2017 (opens source)

  2. Atom, ion & chip qubits

    Demonstrated

    Atoms, diamond spins and silicon spins, at short range. NIST 2004 (opens source) · QuTech 2022 (opens source) · Delft 2026 (opens source)

  3. Logic between computers

    Early demos

    Gates teleported between two linked processors. Oxford 2025 (opens source)

  4. Quantum internet

    Being built

    City-scale links exist; repeaters are still prototypes. Delft–The Hague 2024 (opens source) · Boston 2024 (opens source)

  5. Tiny vibrating objects

    First steps

    One qubit stored in chip-scale mechanical resonators. Delft 2021 (opens source)

  6. Objects & people

    No known path

    ~7×1027 atoms; one estimate says ~1015 years just to send the data.* Leicester (opens source) · JLab (opens source)

* A student back-of-envelope estimate (≈4.55×1042 bits over a 0.5 GHz channel). It shows the scale of the problem, not a precise limit.

Physics says

The hard limits

Myths vs facts

Clearing the fog

Roadmap

The road ahead

Realistic steps. No promises about people.

  1. Underway

    Link

    Reliable teleportation between labs across cities. Delft 2024 (opens source) · Northwestern 2024 (opens source)

  2. Underway

    Store & repeat

    Quantum memories and repeaters to beat fibre loss. Harvard 2024 (opens source) · USTC 2026 (opens source)

  3. Underway (we are here)

    Network computers

    Modular quantum computers joined by teleported gates. Oxford 2025 (opens source)

  4. Next

    Go global

    Satellites plus fibre for continent-spanning links. Micius 2017 (opens source) · Micius 2020 (opens source)

  5. Next

    Bigger states

    From single qubits to many-qubit, molecular and mechanical states. Delft 2021 (opens source) · Logical qubit 2024 (opens source)

  6. Open question

    Objects

    A question for fundamental physics, not engineering. Leicester (opens source)

Backed by national programmes: US National Quantum Initiative Act (Dec 2018) (opens source) · EU Quantum Flagship (Oct 2018) (opens source) · India's National Quantum Mission (2023) (opens source)

Speculative · Not established

Big ideas, not results

References (42)
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  12. Ma et al., Nature 2012 nature.com/articles/nature11472 (opens source)
  13. Wang et al., Nature 2015 nature.com/articles/nature14246 (opens source)
  14. Ren et al., Nature 2017 nature.com/articles/nature23675 (opens source)
  15. 1,200 km: separate entanglement result doi.org/10.1126/science.aan3211 (opens source)
  16. PRX Quantum journals.aps.org/prxquantum/abstract/10.1103/PRXQuantum.1.020317 (opens source)
  17. Nature Photonics nature.com/articles/s41566-021-00866-z (opens source)
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  28. Delft 2026 nature.com/articles/s41586-026-10423-9 (opens source)
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  37. Micius 2020 nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2401-y (opens source)
  38. US National Quantum Initiative Act (Dec 2018) congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/6227 (opens source)
  39. EU Quantum Flagship (Oct 2018) digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/quantum-technologies-flagship (opens source)
  40. India's National Quantum Mission (2023) pib.gov.in/Pressreleaseshare.aspx?PRID=1917888 (opens source)
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